As no one pays me to either forecast or bet on horses, I've got the leeway to speculate. Here goes:

Thursday, March 20, 2003; Baghdad. Dawn.

Scores of cruise missiles demolish a Ba'athist palace in the city before four bunker-busters burrow deep into the facility's fortified bowels.

Saddam Hussein is inside. Saddam Hussein is hit by the blasts. He is killed or incapacitated. Instantly.

Whoever else has been caught in this strike - hailed by the Pentagon as "decaptitation" - is irrelevent. Lunatic as his sons may be, the Butcher of Baghdad has not coveted power for two decades by a lack of strength or coldhearted resolve. He alone is the shadow of fear that drives other men to barbarous oppression through this country; though the men have been twisted beyond human compunction and will lay waste to innocents in the coming weeks, they are, without Saddam, sheep wont to stray and tire themselves to death.

Seconds or minutes after the explosions have occurred, Ba'athist elite scattered about in bunkers across the arid land discover what has happened: who was where, and when. Communication signals are sent discretely. No response from Saddam.

A great fear wraps the Ba'athist inner circle. No significant bombing preceded or has now followed the strike. It's obvious: the Americans acted with great deliberation because they knew Saddam's location. How? The man has moved with such stealth over the years as to impress even those minions whom he places the highest kind of tenuous trust a totalitarian can afford. But the Americans knew. And they weren't gratuitous or sloppy, or clumsy. A series of missiles and bombs, go the reports from party members in the street, and then nothing more. If the Americans knew where to find Saddam, could they have known exactly with what to kill him?

The fear widens into a gaping maw of morbid panic. The Ba'athists begin to feel the American threat as if it were omniscient, and in their terror, they tip their hand with fatal overestimation. If the Americans knew where to find Saddam, think the Ba'athists, and they knew how to kill Saddam, they will know that they have killed Saddam.

Communicators frantically try to raise the dictator. No response.

In their minds, the Ba'athists can feel their empire crumbling before the battle begins: Bush will confidently be informed of Saddam's destruction. Unchallenged by any confirming presence of Saddam, the American president or his men will announce to the world the end of Saddam's reign.

Horrid manacles of fear dispelled, the inherently disloyal lower ranks will revolt before any preventative measures can be taken.

This cannot be.

The Ba'athists rouse one of Saddam's doubles and give him orders at the proverbial or literal gunpoint: get out of bed. Dress in these fatigues.

A double, plucked from obscurity in his Iraqi hometown years ago thanks to an unfortunately coincidental likeness to his governmental captor, has served in parades and public opportunities. He looks like Saddam, has been trained to act like Saddam; he sounds like Saddam. He is instructed to appear before a camera and exhort both his continued vigor and will to fight.

But, unlike Saddam, the poor marionette is quite unfamiliar with the "Unity, Freedom, Socialism" doctrine of 1940s Pan-Arabist ideologies. This man never knew Michel Aflaq, veritable founder of the Ba'athist party, nor did he spend his adult life murdering and scheming like an apostolic mafioso stallion to earn a devil's sovereignty. He is thoroughly incapable of controlling his tongue to spout the words of an conquerer, visceral in a celebration of holding fast to a nation's destiny. He cannot spontaneously deliver a standard of resistance.

And he's nearsighted.

Maddeningly annoyed, pen and paper are obtained by the Ba'athists. Phrases are furiously scribbled down to roughly resemble a speech. They fetch his glasses - the only correction this poor man could ever afford.

He is told to memorize as best he can - but time is running out. A swift rebuttal must be accomplished. He can't verbally falter for lack of material. Reluctant at first but more desperate with time, the Ba'athists let him keep the papers.

A camera rolls, a signal is broadcast. An imposter is made transparent to the world. Saddam has fallen.