"Shock and stupor: with the devastating and disconcerting fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon strategists may have found vindication for their war," said the French-language l'Orient Le Jour in an article headlined Baghdadtown, D.C.

The paper's editorialist Issa Goraeib questioned the fate of Saddam, whether he was killed, fled to his hometown of Tikrit or "negotiated his departure to some exile in return for leaving the keys of his capital in the door".

The Arabic daily Al-Liwa wondered "what happened in Baghdad," in an editorial titled "The Shock of the Fall of Baghdad: Coup or Deal?"

"Was it a last-minute deal? ... Was it a plot hatched at a tough moment? ... Was it the result of fatal differences between the regime's leaders?" asked the paper.

"This question arouses the anger and sadness of the Arab street ... but this could be the starting point of an Iraqi national resistance against the US-British occupation," it said.

Al-Diyar, close to Damascus, wondered if there was a US-Russian deal to exchange Saddam for the fall of Baghdad. "A painful question will continue to haunt the Arabs: Why did the Arabs resist in Baghdad?" it asked.

"We fight now against the occupier," wrote the Arab nationalist Talal Salman, editor and owner of the daily Al-Safir.

He accused Saddam Hussein of "imposing on the Iraqi people a humiliating US-British occupation after a long night of tyranny."

"The Catastrophe of April 9, 2003," was the headline in Al-Mustaqbal, owned by Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, in reference to Al-Naqba, or what Arabs refer to as the "catastrophe" of the creation of Israel in 1948.

No such regrets were echoed in the conservative daily Al-Nahar after Wednesday's collapse of Saddam's rule in Baghdad.

Its editorialist Gibran Tweini said "Baghdad did not fall, it was the regime of Saddam Hussein that has crumbled ... A big prison has been let open allowing millions to taste liberty."

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