One principal difference, of course, is that the Assad family in Syria has never shown the symptoms of meglomania which ultimately caused Saddam to become too dangerous to keep around.
Now it's practically certain that Syria has "inherited" all or most of what was left of Saddam's biological and chemical weapons (and which are appearing in Sudan under the control of Syrian Army special "advisors" and being used "experimentally" to wipe out black Christian villagers in that country's genocidal war).
But until recently Syria has been fairly circumspect about not creating the kinds of waves which would provoke a concerted attempt to overthrow the regime. As in Iraq, any internal opposition is brutally crushed in its crib. For an example you can look at Hama. I had a chance to in 1983. It's now nothing but a giant field of identically sized piles of rubble surrounding what had been the small Christian quarter. That quarter is now what's left of the town plus a bus stop. What's the estimate of the dead in that one city when a revolt was crushed in 1974? 40,000 plus?
They are like a Mafia capo who runs his business, kills and brutalizes only those he needs to to stay out of the direct cross hairs of the law, and who only expands his territory into a vacuum (like civil war racked Lebanon).
The father, Hafez Al Assad, was one of the shrewdest players to ever walk the streets of Damascus. I'm not at all confident that his son is even half as clever. This assassination may be the act which eventually leads the region and the big outside players (France and the US) to finally say enough is enough. Syria doesn't have the oil reserves to pay off M. Chirac and his cronies and I doubt they can produce enough hashish in the Bekaa Valley or tobacco in Latakia to make up the difference.
Do you have a link to information regarding the second part of your post above??