As coalition forces advance on Baghdad, Iraq's vice president Ramadan in an aggressive televised speech broadcast this hour, linked the Iraqi cause to that of the Palestinean cause.

Following our report yesterday on Saddam's attempts to spin the Iraq war as a religious conflict, Ramadam's speech attempted to rally the support of fellow Arab countries. Zionism was singled out. Jordan was singled out for criticism for its perceived lack of support.

While the US-led military, industrial and political complex implements a campaign of "shock and awe" to encourage the Iraq forces to lie down and surrender, many question not that it may well cause fear among Iraqi citizens and maybe regular troops, but whether it will have any effect on those that matter - the military and political leaders of Iraq.

The world should be under no illusions that those in power in Iraq will lie down and play dead. Very few expect that the coalition will lose this war, the odds are just too high. Saddam will go out in a blaze of glory only, much like those suicide pilots in New York who will sacrifice themselves as long as they take out as many of the 'enemy' and cause as much havoc as they can.

There have been reports that when coalition forces encroach an "invisible" line that Iraq forces will be authorised to use chemical weapons. Saddam has suggested many times of a strategy to entice troops into a final urban street battle in Baghdad, where Western technology is of less use. It's Vietnam all over again, a foreign army forced into fighting on other's terms.

Your most dangerous enemy is he who has nothing to lose. And even Hussein may be thinking now that the best Saddam is a dead Saddam - as long as he takes out a lot with him.

The "collateral damage" may well be a divided and more insecure Arab world, a radicalization of more sectors of the Islam world, and an increasingly insecure world