There was no last stand for Saddam Hussein and his vaunted Republican Guard. U.S. troops faced skirmishes but no organized resistance as they rolled into Saddam's hometown of Tikrit yesterday.
The city is the last frontier in the conquest of Iraq - and U.S. forces were bracing for Saddam and as many as 2,500 of Saddam's elite troops and fanatical Fedayeen militia to stage a bloody battle there.
But it wasn't to be.
The press sold this big battle like a pay per view event, but the Iraqis had no stomach for it.
About 3,000 Marines traveled about 100 miles north from Baghdad overnight supported by Cobra attack helicopters and F-18 war planes — a show of force designed to overwhelm any resistance.
They destroyed an Iraqi tank column outside the city and cut down a platoon that dared to take them on.
"They came out of their holes to fight the Marines," Matthew Fisher, a Canadian reporter, told CNN. "About 15 Iraqis died in that exchange, no Americans."
A reporter for Radio France Internationale told today's Washington Post that local people said most of the Iraqi military assigned to defend the city fled before the Marines even advanced, leaving behind tanks, trucks and artillery pieces.
The world is on notice. The support of terrorism will end badly for the supporter.
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