Cover fire from Sahhaf
We now are in a better position to know what Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf's act was. No, not to show that the Iraqi regime had a sense of humor (we knew that anyway), but to cover for the fact that Saddam and virtually everybody else in his entourage had decided probably long before to clear out of Baghdad. Sahhaf was indeed, as the former head of military intelligence, Wafiq al-Samarra'i, told Orbit's Imad al-Din Adeeb (thanks to Joe Bahout for this tidbit), the last remnant of the Iraq regime in the Iraqi captal.

Sahhaf may have behaved like a clown, but he did the job. As if anyone could survive that system by just being funny.