The quagmire in Baghdad’s streets did not materialize and neither did the last stand at Tikrit as Saddam’s hometown was captured today without much of a fight. I somehow had that feeling last Saturday evening when CNN reporters were driving around Tikrit unhindered, running into a only a few wandering Iraqi soldiers, some of them even unarmed. With the US now pulling two aircraft carriers out of the Gulf it is evident that Iraqi Freedom is coming to an end. The rebuilding effort is gaining momentum as is the pressure on Syria which I have been discussing below, more on this here. It will take some time but I will not be too hard to do an accounting exercise on Iraq’s military assets and determine what has been destroyed, what has survived and what has gone missing. In the latter case, the missing parts may well be safe and sound inside Syria as is a significant group of former Iraqi leaders.