Stardate 20030321.2033

(On Screen): US Intelligence managed, somehow, to figure out that a very top-level meeting of the most senior people in Iraq was going to take place in a particular bunker Wednesday evening, and President Bush gave authorization to bomb it. We still aren't sure who, exactly, was in there and which of them might have died in the attack. But it's developing now that it was by no means a failure, and it's going to affect the outcome of the war.

One rumor was that a story was planted that Aziz had defected, which led to him making a TV appearance to say he had not. The rumor was that this placed him, and then we were able to track him to the meeting where he was one of the attendees. We probably won't know for a long time if that story is true (it could be a rumor; it could be a cover story), but it's certainly a pleasing idea.

Whether we tracked him or not, he would have been at a planning meeting of that kind, and it's noteworthy that there's been no sign of him since.

There's an unconfirmed report that Saddam himself was taken away from that location on a gurney. There was what looked a lot like a cover story which said that Uday had suffered from an aneurysm or some such thing; it seems more likely that he too was at that meeting and was another victim.

And now US intelligence has said that they think three other key figures were there and were killed: Taha Yasin Ramadan, Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, and Ali Hassan Majid.

So if we assume that Uday is incapacitated, Saddam is at the very least badly injured and may have since died, and these three others are gone, then this may well explain the rudderlessness.

Earlier this week, Saddam reorganized his top command structure. Iraq was divided into four zones with a new commander for each. Qusay, about whose fate there's no word one way or the other, was given command of the sector containing Baghdad and Tikrit. Ali Hassan Majid was given command of the south. Izzat Ibrahim al Douri was given northern Iraq. Majid and al Douri both are claimed to have been killed in the attack.

The fourth commander was Mizban Khodr al-Hadi for the central Euphrates area. And Saddam himself retained control over the air force and all missiles. (Which have been notably absent from the battle.)

So at least two of the four top regional commanders died, and it looks like Saddam has been incapacitated if he's even still alive, and there's no one else with any authority to take over and appoint replacements. If that's the case, it would explain why there doesn't seem to be any kind of response to our attack: we truly did decapitate the regime.

What about Qusay? He is, apparently, the designated heir, and he's one of the commanders. If he was alive and well, he'd certainly know whether Saddam was out, and I think that in that case Qusay would step up and take command, and he'd be obeyed too. Since there seems to be no indication that anything like this has happened, I have a suspicion that Qusay also was in that bunker. Considering the kind of meeting that seems to have taken place, it's entirely plausible that he was.

If we ended up getting all 7 of them (all three Husseins, Aziz, and the other three top commanders), then it's going to be one for the record books. And it's going to mean that in a real sense we truly did win the war in the first attack.