By Thomas W. Lippman

After three weeks of war, Saddam Hussein no longer rules Baghdad. U.S. tanks rolled unmolested into the center of Iraq's capital city today to a tumultuous welcome from jubilant residents. The White House and U.S. military leaders proclaimed an end to Hussein's control of Baghdad, stopping just short of declaring victory in the campaign to oust the Iraqi president and destroy his regime. Firefights continued around Baghdad's perimeter as U.S. troops mopped up isolated pockets of resistance. Senior military commanders said fighting could still lie ahead against remnants of Iraq's military forces and militias, especially in Hussein's family center at Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad.

Television cameras showed stunning images of American troops, weapons at the ready but mostly relaxed, walking on the streets of Baghdad among residents celebrating the downfall of Hussein after more than two decades of police-state control. Just 24 hours earlier, it appeared that U.S. forces might be in for a prolonged bout of nasty urban warfare, but most Iraqi resistance melted away after another night of relentless pounding by U.S. warplanes and artillery. Baghdadis poured into the streets in celebration, waving at U.S. troops and tearing down posters and busts of Hussein. In a scene reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraqis attacked a giant statue of Hussein with sledgehammers. With the help of U.S. Marines who ran a cable from their tank to the 20-foot tall statue, they pulled it down, literally yanking the image of the fallen leader out of his boots.

Despite some resistance in the city, it was clear that U.S. military leaders -- and the Bush administration -- believe the critical milestone has been passed. "In downtown Baghdad this morning, we are seeing evidence of the collapse of any central regime authority," Vice President Cheney said in a previously scheduled speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in New Orleans. "The streets are full of people celebrating. While pockets of regime security forces may remain, they appear to be far less effective at putting up any resistance."

Enjoying the success of the moment, Cheney took a potshot of his own at critics who had said military planning for the war was flawed and the resources deployed were insufficient "In the early days of the war, the plan was criticized by some retired military officers embedded in TV studios," Cheney observed, to laughter from the same editors who printed much of the unfavorable commentary. "But with every day and every advance by our coalition forces, the wisdom of that plan becomes more apparent."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that President Bush was cautiously optimistic. "As much as the president is pleased to see the progress of the military campaign . . . he remains very cautious because he knows there is great danger that can still lie ahead," Fleischer said. Nevertheless, Fleischer said, "It's a historic moment. This is a powerful testament to mankind's desire to live free." At the Central Command field headquarters in Doha, Qatar, Army Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks told reporters, "The capital city is now one of those areas that has been added to the list of where the regime does not have control."

Fighting continues in several parts of Iraq and "there is a lot of tough work to be done," Brooks said, but "I think we are at a degree of tipping point where for the population there is a broader recognition that this regime is coming to an end and will not return in a way that it has been in the past." In contrast to previous days, when the Centcom briefing focused on airstrikes and troop movements, Brooks dwelled at length today on the medical assistance he said U.S. military doctors are providing to sick and wounded Iraqi civilians. As he spoke, tank-led U.S. convoys pushed into the heart of the Iraqi capital, amid abundant signs that Hussein's control has evaporated. Journalists in the city reported that government officials have disappeared and even the Information Ministry "minders" who had supervised all foreign reporters were nowhere to be seen. Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, who as recently as yesterday was predicting victory, was not heard from today.

As state organizations collapsed, citizens of Baghdad rushed into the streets and into abandoned buildings to do some liberating of their own. Television cameras captured images of people carrying off air conditioners, tires, furniture, refrigerators and even a vase of flowers. Among the buildings plundered were Iraq's Olympic headquarters and traffic police headquarters, the Associated Press reported. U.S. military forces are not trained or equipped to become a police force for Iraqi cities, and the need to install some form of civil authority appears to be urgent. The city lacks electricity, water and a functioning police force. Brooks, however, sought to minimize the threat of mass civil disorder. "I think in this case we're seeing a lot of jubilation, and people who have long been oppressed for years and years having choices," he said. "We believe that this will settle down in due time."

"Total control has been replaced by sheer anarchy," said James Bays, a British journalist in Baghdad. He was reporting from the Palestine Hotel, the media center in Baghdad, where yesterday two journalists died when a U.S. Army tank shelled the upper floors. Today, Bays said, the hotel's occupants would welcome the approaching tanks in the hope that the would provide security, which no one else seemed capable of doing. The United States has been assembling a team to set up an interim civil administration for Iraq, but it is still in Kuwait. The United States, Britain, several European countries and the United Nations have been haggling for weeks over who will exercise what authority in postwar Iraq. There was no sign of Hussein himself or any members of his family. It is still not known if they survived the U.S. air strike that hit a building in Baghdad where Hussein and his sons were believed to be attending a meeting earlier this week.

Fleischer said he had no information on Hussein's status and dismissed suggestions that the dictator may go into exile. "He missed his chance," he said. "The president gave him his opportunity; he did not take it." If Hussein and his sons did survive and managed to flee the city, their destination would probably be Tikrit, at least initially, but U.S. troops have blocked most roads leading out of Baghdad. U.S. warplanes have struck government and Baath party installations repeatedly in the Tikrit area, but Brooks said U.S. commanders have not yet decided to send ground troops into Hussein's clan stronghold. Brooks described an accelerating process by which U.S. forces in Baghdad and central Iraq, and British forces in the south and southeast, are consolidating their control and learning more about the alleged human rights abuses and military secrets of the Hussein government. "As regime security forces are eliminated from populated areas, more information is provided by the liberated Iraqis," he said, citing as an example a truckload of missiles to which U.S. Marines had been alerted by Iraqi civilians.

In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Kurds saw the television images from Baghdad and raced into the streets themselves, Washington Post correspondent Karl Vick reported. By midafternoon, thousands of cheering, dancing Kurds had clogged downtown Sulaimaniyah, the largest city in the eastern zone of the Iraqi north, which has been beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein since the 1991 Persian Gulf war. "It's been on all the news: They are saying it has ended," said Jalal Nadir, standing beside a main street jammed with revelers for more than two miles. Private cars and flatbed trucks inched by, piled with young people waving anything green, the color of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party that has governed this section of Kurdish Iraq since 1991. Others hoisted portraits of Jalal Talabani, the party's avuncular chairman. But those who could find anything red, white and blue waved it, too. Men in the back of one pickup waved a home-made Union Jack and U.S. flag. Another pair held a homemade painting showing Iraq being delivered by arms clad in the flags of America and England.

Restraining Kurdish military units from marching into Arab-controlled regions near the oil fields around Mosul and Kirkuk could present a major diplomatic challenge for the United States and Britain because of Turkey's concerns about aspirations for independence among its own Kurdish minority. Despite the celebrations, the war in the north continued unabated. U.S. special operations troops and Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga seized a strategic mountaintop in northern Iraq early Wednesday, eliminating a crucial air defense installation near the government-held city of Mosul. U.S. aircraft returned to pound Mosul, and special operations forces were "actively engaging" Iraqi forces there and in Tikrit, 125 miles to the south, Centcom said. Coalition aircraft struck the Iraqi base on the craggy 3,000-foot-high peak before Kurdish ground forces moved forward early Wednesday and won control of the air defense system, which had been used against American war planes.

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