The last hours of Saddam Hussein's reviled regime may finally be at hand. But there is considerable confusion about whether Republican Guard units guarding the southern approaches to Baghdad have been defeated or have simply retreated into the city to regroup. If this is the case, U.S. and Iraqi forces may finally meet on more or less equal terms in a bloody battle that will involve tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and imperil their lives. "Marines take the fight that they are given," said Lieutenant- Colonel Stacey Clardy, commander of the Third Light Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion. "We will take...