Many years ago when I was young and foolish, I bought into that old collegiate remedy for the morning after too much of a bad thing.

Go back for more.

It was referred to as the "hair of the dog that bit you."

Now that I’m older and a wee bit wiser, I just look back and shake my head.

How could I ever believe that the curse and the cure could be one and the same?

Surprisingly, there’s at least one dictator, advancing in years, who appears to be older but not that much wiser.

I’m referring to Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Driven by a rare mixture of revenge and opportunity, it appears Saddam is preparing to repeat history…with devastating results.

If we think back 15 years, before the start of the Gulf War, Saddam was the best of a bad lot, chosen by the United States to stand against radical, fundamentalist Muslim Iran in a bloody war that took hundreds of thousands of lives. We supplied Iraq with munitions to fuel the fire.

And word was out on the street that Saddam and U.S. President George H. W. Bush were actually business partners, of sorts.

All that changed in 1990, when the US chose Iraq as the whipping boy and an international magnet to draw together forces of the "New World Order."

American Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie passed along to Saddam what she believed to be the official US position…that if Iraq chose to invade Kuwait, we would stand aside. It was none of our business.

Only after the Iraqi tanks rolled south, did we express our moral outrage and marshal forces for what became known as Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Iraqi forces were crushed under our high-tech military steamroller.

But we left Saddam in power.

Bad move.

Now, 10 years later, Saddam must feel that his Babylonian gods are smiling on him. Not only is there a new Intifada in Israel, just begging his involvement. There is a new occupant entering the US White House, George W. Bush, the son of his old nemesis.

Saddam probably feels like he just hit the lottery.

Not only is the son of his old enemy at the helm of the American ship of state; he has surrounded himself with all his father’s old cronies including Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. So, there’s a personal score that can be settled.

And what a time to settle it. After eight years of Bill Clinton’s indifference, the US armed forces are perceived to be at their weakest. Give George and the Republicans another two, three or four years to repair that and it could be too late for Saddam to act.

The geopolitical structure of the world has also changed. No longer does the US have France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria at its side in the trenches. Even Britain appears to be waffling in its opposition to Saddam.

When Scud missiles hit Jerusalem 10 years ago, we told Israel not to answer. Gulf coalition forces would handle the response. Now, there is no gulf coalition. And when the Scuds start flying again, only the US and Israel are likely to answer the call.

Not only do we risk actually predicting this coming crime, we can even see a time frame shaping up. With Israel planning its elections February 6^th and hard-liner Ariel Sharon of the Likud Party likely to succeed Labor’s Ehud Barak, Saddam and his militant friends in Damascus and Beirut are not likely to wait. Israel has always fared better in wars when it took the initiative. That is not likely to happen under Barak. But things could change with Sharon.

I don’t claim to be a biblical prophet. But if I had to predict a window of opportunity for the next regional Middle East war, I would say it opens on January 20^th at noon, when George W. Bush becomes our next President and closes a bit after February 6^th.

The Bible does make it clear that this war will end no differently for Saddam and his Muslim cohorts. The prophecies of Isaiah 17:1 and Jeremiah Chapter 50 are likely to be fulfilled…the destruction of Damascus and Babylon.

Recent statements flying from Baghdad lately are aimed at whipping the populace into a war frenzy against both Israel and the United States.

It appears Saddam is ready for some more "hair of the Yankee dog that bit him."

But he may not be prepared for the nuclear hangover.

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