"But the sheiks and imams who promote the insurgency aren't Baathists and aren't secular." That's true for the Shi'ite Side of it. And in a different way the Al Qaeda type outsiders who have moved in on the back of the invasion. But the media reports - and that all we have to go on - suggest that it isn't particularly true when it comes to the Sunni based insurgents, who would be the relevant ones when it came to whether Syria or Saudi Arabia would have more chance of restraining or diverting them.
..............................

My point about the Russians is that they just don't seem to feature as "the enemy" in most peoples minds here, and never have. After all, the last (and only) time there was any war with Russia was back in the days of the Crimea, and that's almost as long ago as the last war with the USA. Governments now - well, Tsarist, Communist or post-Communist, they seem much the same in a lot of ways, as the headlines in today's papers rather indicate. But that's another matter.