PINR, One rule of thumb for maintaining a totalitarian regime is to always have an airtight grip on the loyalty of the military officer corps. From Rome's dark year of revolutions following the collapse of the Judeo-Claudian dynasty to England's hard lesson of Oliver Cromwell, the warning remains the same: the backing of the military is tantamount to the legitimacy of a ruler's power.
A more recent example of this principle, demonstrated by the posthumous regime of Saddam Hussein, should not be used as a blueprint for other members of the “axis of evil.” Such a regime as Saddam's Ba'ath Party took many years as well as formable skill on the part of the Iraqi president on his rise to power. Therefore, it was also in this design that Saddam required a counter-balance vis-
