Unfinished Business

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It will be days or weeks before U.S. intelligence analysts can confidently judge when the latest tape was recorded and what it means. At a glance, some officials doubted that a man who kept his own Republican Guards out of Baghdad for fear of mutiny would do a walkabout on the day his capital was stormed by a foreign invader. They suggested that the tape must have been made weeks earlier. But there had been clues for days that perhaps Saddam had escaped again. The U.S. had not yet sent a team to dig for proof--for his body or at least his DNA--at the site of the April 7 bombing. (Despite denials from Washington, officials at U.S. Central Command stuck by their claim that they have his DNA. Franks won't say how the sample was obtained, but sources point to a dental lab found at one of Saddam's palaces.) Pentagon officials now think that Saddam may have been hiding in a white-stuccoed house adjacent to the building that was destroyed: neighbors note that the house boasted five telephone lines and a wooden desk like the one Saddam sat behind during his television appearances early in the war. As many as 10,000 U.S. special-operations troops in the region are exploring palaces, tunnels, bunkers and other places where Saddam may be hiding--or where evidence may be found to help track him.

In the meantime, the Americans can take some satisfaction from a few big catches: after passing out the 55 playing cards depicting their most wanted, they began to take some tricks--two half brothers, the Finance Minister, a senior party official. Top science adviser Amir al-Saadi had surrendered the week before, and Imad Hussayn al-Ani, who is supposed to have been in charge of Saddam's VX nerve-gas program, turned himself in on Friday. For good measure, Abu Abbas, mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985, was captured in Baghdad.

--WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS?

Saddam was not the only thing missing. For months before the war began, everyone from Bush on down argued that Saddam's arsenal of biological and chemical weapons was so dangerous that destroying it was worth a war. They laid claim to information so certain that Colin Powell was able to provide graphic details to a U.N. audience in February. Pentagon officials were confident that the quality of their intelligence would lead troops to the illicit stockpiles fairly quickly once U.S. boots were on Iraqi soil. Now they're adjusting the picture: the Pentagon says its soldiers are no more likely to stumble over a weapons cache than top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix was. "Things were mobile. Things were underground. Things were in tunnels. Things were hidden. Things were dispersed. Now, are we going to find that? No, it's a big country," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week. "The inspectors didn't find anything, and I doubt that we will--what we will do is find the people who will tell us."