Due to the fluidity of the situation, the dilemma for US military officials will now be in evaluating the best course of action and will choose the right moment to present their recommendation to civil authorities.

Protocol would require that a formal declaration of military victory in Iraq be left to US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

According to US officials cited by the Washington Post, the Bush administration has set out a procedure to determine the exact moment when victory can be declared, without necessarily awaiting the end of military operations.

Dubbed a "rolling victory" -- just as the start of the war was described as a "rolling start" -- the approach consists of evaluating progress of the offensive in terms as much psychological as territorial.

"The objective is not necessarily to take buildings or occupy areas," one senior military officer involved in planning for the war's conclusion told the Post. "It's the people. It's getting them to accept the fact that the regime is gone. That's the essence of the thing."

The "rolling victory" approach would come at an unknown moment when US forces are in control of "significant territory and have eliminated a critical mass of Iraqi resistance," the Post said.

"It's going to be a fairly nebulous situation," a civilian official of the Bush administration said.

On Monday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cited other factors, Iraq's stabilization, security of logistics and supply of humanitarian aid to central Iraq, and the return of people displaced by the war.

Much will depend on how operations commander in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, views the situation.

Once US officials decide that most of the country is secure and that the Iraqi leadership has been eliminated or neutralized, Franks would recommend that his operations base be transfered from the Qatari capital Doha to Iraq itself.

There he would set up operations in the company of retired US general Jay Garner who will head to Baghdad to take the role of interim administrator once the shooting stops, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

"They'll move to the Baghdad area at that point that the Baghdad airport is sufficiently secured to take a number of civilians who are not in a combat situation ... as the war and the kinetics decline," Rumsfeld said.

Meanwhile, the United States will not be waiting until firm information is available on the fate of Saddam Hussein.

"I don't think it will be necessarily hinge on Saddam Hussein," Rumsfeld said on Monday. "At the point where he is no longer running his country, the regime has been changed.

"From a rolling victory perspective, you are going to have cities by cities being liberated," said Patrick Garrett, military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org. "People will be given the opportunity to realize that Saddam is no longer in power.

"They'll do it step by step. Obviously there is not going to be a surrender on the USS Missouri," he said, referring to the Japanese surrender in 1945.

"They are going to say that regime change has taken place (and) technically speaking, it's true. What's left now is dealing with pockets of resistance that he still has in the country."

Garrett predicted some sort of grand display to show the population the Saddam regime had fallen to the US-British coalition.

"Most likely there will be some sort of official ceremony in Baghdad in the next few days. And you'll see that everywhere, in a lot of cities," he said.

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