The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein came to an end on Wednesday, April 9, not with the advance of armoured columns of the US Marines across the city's old quarter or even with the dramatic toppling of a 6-m-high statue of the Iraqi leader in central Baghdad's Firdos Square. It ended because ordinary Iraqis began tentatively to speak their minds, with little fear of retribution from the vast security apparatus that buttressed Saddam's regime for nearly a quarter century. Policemen and activists of the ruling Baa'th Party began shedding the uniforms and fleeing Baghdad two days before US forces fought their way into the sprawling Republican Palace on the west bank of the Tigris, the seat of Saddam's regime. Soldiers drifted away from their machine-gun nests at key intersections in the city.

END OF DAYS: Saddam's sculptures and posters take a beating at the hands of Iraqis and armoured coalition troops in Baghdad

By the time the US tanks and armoured personnel carriers rolled up on Sadoun Street on Wednesday afternoon, there were no Iraqi troops or loyalists left to impede them. The apparatus of a military more keen on repression than defending the nation against an attack had dissolved. As the final hours of Saddam's regime ticked away, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf was the sole face of the government for the foreign press and the outside world. That face, however, seemed lost in a room of funhouse mirrors.

"American forces are being defeated. We besieged them and killed most of them. We will slaughter them all and bury them in Iraq," Sahhaf told reporters on Monday, April 7, at a hastily called press conference on the roof of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad.

If the buffed Iraqi information minister had turned his head and looked a half-mile across the Tigris river, he would have easily seen four US Bradley fighting vehicles in the backyard of the Republican Palace. If Sahhaf had been on the roof two hours earlier, he would have witnessed an equally dismaying sight: nearly 20 members of Saddam's feared fidayeen force fleeing for their lives down the banks of the Tigris, some in their underwear.

Little wonder then that the regime's chief flack didn't want to look. Till the US Marine armoured unit forged ahead on the east side of the Tigris on Wednesday, the attack on Saddam's palace on Monday had been the biggest psychological blow inflicted in this war.

The palace's defenders appeared stunned. Several of Saddam's Special Republican Guards dashed across the embankment and jumped into another trench. Within minutes, American soldiers were inside Saddam's redoubt, the chatter of their automatic rifles leading the way.

Despite the American success, a videotape of the attack showed the vagaries of a war where the fear of suicide bombers still lurks. From half a mile away, the film showed two Iraqi soldiers surrendering to the US forces as they assaulted the compound. They threw up their hands in the air, ran up the stairs bordering the palace grounds and threw themselves on the ground, one of them immediately rolling over on his back.

FACE-OFF: US Marines help Baghdadis topple the statue of Saddam

Their presence surprised the two US soldiers standing behind a Bradley with their guns pointed at the palace grounds. The soldiers turned towards the Iraqis, and apparently uncertain whether the man lying on his back was going to surrender or fight, hesitated for five seconds. Then the body of the prone Iraqi jumped as he was shot. The film later shows the surviving Iraqi soldier being led away and a US soldier frisking the dead man's body for documents. The body was left behind on the ground.

But such brutal incidents and the mounting civilian casualty toll were set aside on Wednesday as the American armoured column moved carefully up Sadoun. The Baghdadis who had remained in the city instead of fleeing ran to the kerb outside their homes. And while the Marines armed with M16s hugged the sides of buildings scanning rooftops for snipers, the Iraqis waved white handkerchiefs and cheered.

Victoria Chalaby, 65, was so dazed with excitement that she walked in circles on the edge of Fateh Square, fanning herself with her hands and trying to catch her breath. "America is good. God is good," she exclaimed, as her neighbours across the square tore down the picture of Saddam adorning a store entrance. There were others happily exhuming pieces of buried history, long suppressed for fear of Saddam. "If you said anything," revealed 72-year-old Baba Shemson Baba, a retired dentist, "he would have the heads off you and your family, or they would die in a 'car accident'."

Was the war necessary?

"With this fellow, yes."

HEAD COUNT: A US soldier with Saddam busts in one of the palaces; (below) an indured woman with her four-year-old daughter in Baghdad

Majid Mohammed said he could tell as early as Wednesday morning that Saddam's term was over: the neighbourhood security officers had fled or had changed their licence plates to hide their identities. "I have much that I want to tell you," he said about the past two decades. A mechanical engineer, he was fired from his job as an officer in the Iraqi Air Force in 1991 after being accused of opposing the Saddam regime. Since then, he has been unable to find work or receive treatment in public hospitals. "Believe me, I have waited for this moment," he said just minutes before the Marine column arrived in his neighbourhood. "Thank you. Thank you very, very, very much."

The reactions of Baba and many other jubilant Iraqis to the procession of the US armour and troops vindicated the hardships suffered by the Marines. Crouched in a corner, his black M16 trained on an unidentified automobile approaching half a mile away, Lance Corporal Chris Gram of Harlem, Georgia, said the lengthy wait in Kuwait for the war to begin had been worth it. "I watched a whole crowd of people tear down a picture of Saddam," said the 19-year-old Gram. "I think we are liberating a country that has been oppressed by a dictator."

The jubilation was not uniform though. Proud, nationalistic and afraid of the US military's enormous firepower, many were disturbed to see the US troops roll through their capital hoisting American flags on their tanks and armoured vehicles. "Can you tell them to pull down their flags?" asked Mazen Hussein, an ophthalmologist who came out in his white laboratory coat to see the Marines. Hussein and his friend, veterinarian Sa'ad Al Kaabi, then approached one of the vehicles and asked the crew to lower the flag. The soldiers couldn't hear them over the roar of the engine.

As the Marine column drew to a halt at Firdos Square, two Iraqis wept openly. Not over the ouster of a man many Iraqis affectionately call "Father", but out of humiliation. The heart of their capital had once again been trampled by a western army. "We're crying for our country-not for Saddam, not for the Iraqi leadership, but for Iraq," said Abdullah Samara, 40, a taxidriver.

VICTORY PARADE: An Iraqi boy celebrates the arrival of coalition troops and armoured vehicles (below) on the streets of Baghdad

Many of the journalists gathered in the square were sober too. A day earlier, a US tank had fired at the Palestine Hotel, killing two of their tribe and wounding two others. Elsewhere in the city, American munitions killed a reporter from the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network.

The toppling of Saddam's statue at the square illustrated the riot of emotions running through the Iraqis and the equally complex relationship they now have with the US. Two Iraqis mounted the statue and hit it with a hammer, in vain, first at its metal feet, then at the concrete pedestal. Then they lassoed the statue's head with a yellow rope and the crowd on the ground gave it a tug. Nothing. Finally, the Marines offered help. An American armoured personnel carrier backed noisily across the square and tied a cable to the rope. The rope snapped. So two Marines climbed the carrier's hoist and tied a cable around the chest-but not before draping Saddam's head in an American flag.

On the ground, Ibrahim Dalami watched. Five years ago, he was jailed, the prison staff pouring water in his cell and then applying current to send a shock ripping through him. All because two of his brothers had fled Iraq after opposing Saddam. Since 1987, security officers had visited him almost every month demanding to know about their whereabouts. "All the Iraqis hate him," Dalami said as the people rushed towards the statue. "We want this." But now, he is dismayed. The American flag is too prominently displayed. "That is not a good idea. We only want freedom, not another occupation," he said, alluding to the prospect of a long US presence in Iraq.

Soon, a Marine thought the better of it too. The Stars-and-Stripes was replaced with an Iraqi flag, minus the "God is Great" in Arab script-Saddam had added it, purportedly in his own handwriting, in the early 1990s. Within minutes, the Marines gunned the motor of the armoured vehicle and the statue came down, tearing slowly from its pedestal and bending forward at the knees. Then it dropped to the ground.

PAIN PROFILE: An Iraqi woman arriving at a hospital with her wounded husband

This was no "people power" revolution. Indeed, despite the iconic film footage of the toppling statue being played over and over again in the US, there were barely 300 people in the square, many of them reporters. Watching an American armoured vehicle bringing down the statue underscored for many Baghdadis-even anti-Saddam and pro-American city residents-their dependence on the US, and the helplessness. "Iraq is being sacked," one muttered.

There will be more violence across Iraq in the days ahead. There will be attacks by diehard Saddam supporters. There will be looting and factional gunfights. More importantly, the terror imposed by Saddam cannot be shed in a day. Indeed, many Iraqis who expressed themselves openly on Wednesday, refused to allow their names to be used. Fear dies gradually.

The most significant question, however, is whether those who have suffered grievously in this war will undermine the US-imposed civilian administration in Iraq. At the Yarmouk Hospital in central Baghdad, it seemed a distinct possibility. Pain was interspersed with vindication among the patients in the hospital.

Two hours earlier, Ali Sabah had been preparing to change the oil in his car. Then there was a deafening explosion and Sabah was rushed to a hospital in southwestern Baghdad. The face of the 24-year-old civil engineering student at Baghdad's Institute of Technology was contorted in agony. The doctor dressed the dime-sized hole and five-inch slice in his left thigh, wounds they say were inflicted by a cluster-bomb dropped by a US warplane. On a bed behind him, Bashir Mohammed stood cradling his brother's head on his shoulder, consoling him. Sabah isn't easily comforted. In cryptic English, he spits out his plans for the Americans who he believes have robbed him of a piece of his life.

"I will try to find just one of them and I will kill him in many ways. They are infidels and criminals," he says. Then, weakly motioning upwards with his arms, he exclaims, "There may be rockets up there. There may be planes up there. But we have Allah up there too!"