Given the massive defections and surrenders already occuring, it was just suggested to me that we shouldn't think of this as invading Iraq, so much as a huge hostage standoff, in which we're trying to arrest or kill him before he can kill the hostages.

[Update, a few minutes before the sand runs out of Saddam's forty-eight hourglass]

David Warren agrees.

Would that it were possible to temporarily remove the entire Iraqi civilian population, but Mr. Saddam won't let them go.

For the war to come is likely to resemble the resolution of the largest hostage crisis in history. The task of the allies is to remove Mr. Saddam, and his fellow monsters, while sparing every possible innocent human life that he is holding for his protection. Mr. Saddam's strategy, for the battle ahead, as revealed in everything from satellite imagery, to reports from special forces ensconced on the ground, to what is now a flood of information from defectors and even Iraqi general staff, hoping to preserve their own lives through the conflict, is to maximize the carnage and suffering, in the earnest expectation that the world's U.S.-haters will blame it all on Washington, not Baghdad.

Read the whole thing--it has some interesting and, to me, credible speculation on Saddam's brutal strategy and the course of the war.

Ya know what I don't understand? If we're this all-murdering, bloodthirsty, blood-lusty bunch, HOW BAD MUST IT BE FOR IRAQIS TO SURRENDER IN DROVES BEFORE THE WAR BEGINS?????

I mean, lemme get this straight. We're Charles Manson and Al Capone mixed up w/ some Jeffrey Dahmer, right? I mean, even if we aren't, sure as heck Saddam's been pumping this stuff out to the troops.

Yet, on the verge of war, these guys are already walking across and begging to be taken prisoner. Made helpless and disarmed. By these same bloodthirsty war criminals.

Kinda makes you wonder what life was like under Saddam, don't it?

Another way of looking at it - this is the first war in the history of man where the defending army has taken it's own people hostage, and the invading army cares.

War is the wrong word. It's definitely not a war, but I'm struggling to come up with the right term. It's more like an assassination using exhaustive methods.