Newsmax.Com
Friday, March 21, 2003

The potential significance of Rumsfeld’s revelation was reinforced by a senior military official who told Fox News that U.S. intelligence had gleaned "circumstantial evidence" that Saddam and his senior leadership were either incapacitated or out of communication with battlefield commanders – leaving at least a partial vacuum at the top:

"We are seeing no coordinated response to our first attack. It's little things here and there. Some individual commanders are hunking down while others are launching small attacks and setting fires."

Meanwhile other military officials note it is significant that there is a lack of coordination and significant resistance. Pentagon officials said large numbers of senior Republican Guard members are signaling that they would like to surrender.

"There are significant indications that the Iraqi military is breaking from within," a Defense official told Fox News.

"We still hope that it is possible that they (Iraqi leaders) will not be there without the full force and fury of a war," Rumsfeld said Thursday night after meeting with lawmakers. "There are communications in every conceivable mode and method, public and private."

The defense secretary said there was "broad and deep evidence that suggests that there are people going through that decision-making process throughout that country today."

Reports that Saddam was wounded in America's pre-dawn "decapitation" strike on Baghdad turned out to be false. Rumsfeld said the first flight of American missiles into Baghdad indeed hit a senior Iraqi leadership position in the pre-dawn attack, but a result assessment was still pending.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Saddam Hussein/Iraq

Editor's note:
FREE E-mail Alerts From NewsMax.com - Click Here Now!