Baath time is over

General Tommy Franks has announced flatly: "The Iraqi Baath Socialist Party is dissolved." It's more a formality than anything else — most Baath leaders have fled or are in, um, "stable condition" — but it opened the door for Franks' next statement, which calls for the surrender of Baath Party or other Iraqi goverment documents to the coalition government.

One step at a time, as they say.