Anyone who’s ever butchered chickens will tell tales of how the body will continue to run around the yard, comically (if you’re not a PETA member or a chicken) flapping its wings, after its head has been removed. The body doesn’t die immediately. Similarly, after a snake is beheaded, the body will continue to thrash around for a while.

I think that’s what we’re seeing in Iraq. In other words, the hit on the first night probably was successful, but it’s just taking a while for the regime to quit thrashing.

There’s no evidence that the military is coordinated in any way–most of the action, particularly in the south, seems to be a freelance rearguard thing to keep hope alive as long as possible that somehow the regime will survive. It’s also designed to keep the Ba’athists, cut off from their headquarters in Baghdad and Tikrit, alive as long as possible, because they know they won’t survive the end of the regime. Even if the Americans let them live, there will be lynchings.

This regime is dead, but hasn’t figured it out yet.