I don't understand the Saddam personality cult that still afflicts some sectors in Jordan. Al-Quds Al-`Arabi is reporting that pictures of Saddam are sprouting at Ba`thist meetings there, and even the father of the Jordanian soldier who died from the bombing in `Aqaba two days ago was a senior leader of the Ba`th Party. There is so much money being spent in `Amman, my friends tell me, which pushed real estate prices sky high, to use a cliche. Apparently, the Jordanian government recently urged Saddam's active daughter Raghd to cool it. A friend told me that in many quarters in Jordan people can not express opposition to Saddam. Which reminds me: did you see the text of the letter sent by Saddam to the "beloved people of Jordan"? It has the typical Saddam's style that works better than the strongest of sleeping pills. But I get most annoyed when I read Saddam's references to Palestine. Do people still remember how Saddam was sending messages of "good will" to Israel in the late 1980s during his honey moon relations with the Reagan and Bush administrations?