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I also wonder about these stories that our rush to Baghdad has had to be curtailed because of paras harassing our rear. It's interesting that everybody's forgotten about the 3,000 cruise missiles that were supposed to be raining down on Baghdad at the start of the conflict -- first that idea was postponed, now it's been quietly dropped altogether. Rear-guard action by paras can't explain that. No, it looks like the two opening moves of the campaign -- the alleged bunker bombing (we don't know if they even hit a bunker) and the lunge for Baghdad, were feints -- perhaps an attempt to see if the regime would fold quickly. But the absence of those 3,000 missiles raining on Baghdad tells you that inside-out was never the real strategy, except for public consumption. We're back to outside-in, which is my model predicted we would do, if we decided we couldn't wait. It gives Saddam something to play for, while we isolate him. A nice added touch is the obliteration of his palaces, which underline that he won't have much to go back to, even if he pulls it out. Now, since we've gone in without any real homeland defense against what he's got (perhaps the conclusion was that was never going to be feasible on any practical timescale), we are still vulnerable to his upping the ante with WMD attacks against US population centers coordinated with a seige or "Baghdadograd" street-fighting. I assume, or at least hope, that we have some pretty good intel that he plans to fold rather than take it to the brink -- perhaps evidence of money transfers, stashing of loot overseas, etc. Because, otherwise, it seems like a rather "risky scheme" we have undertaken, don't you think?