CCMEP's US Bombing Watch: 1998

U.S. Bombing Watch: Archive of U.S. Bombings, Invasions and Occupations of Iraq (Methodology History of U.S. Bombing Watch)

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Recent clashes between US and British planes and Iraqi air defense units in the so-called "no-fly zones" in the north and south of the country underscore the highly volatile situation in the Persian Gulf and the entire Middle East in the aftermath of the four-day air war carried out by Washington and London.

Iraq's decision on Monday to fire SAM missiles at US planes patrolling the northern region was a major step by Baghdad. Throughout the four-day air war, the Iraqi regime withheld its SAM missile defenses, using only ineffective anti-aircraft artillery. American network news reports Monday evening quoted unnamed US officials saying they considered a wider war with Iraq inevitable.

The Iraqi regime calculates that the December 16-19 air war was a political and diplomatic failure for the Americans. By announcing it will defy the ban on Iraqi flights over the "no-fly zones" and treat western air patrols as violations of its air space, it is seeking to widen the divisions within the UN Security Council between the US and Britain on the one side, and France, Russia and China on the other. It is also seeking to pressure the Arab regimes to demand a lifting of the sanctions, appealing to the outrage among the Arab masses over the US-led vendetta.

Iraqi newspapers on Tuesday hailed widespread public protests in Arab capitals against the US-British air strikes and criticized Arab governments for doing little or nothing to oppose the bombing. In a front-page editorial, Iraq's al-Qadissiya newspaper warned Arab leaders that ignoring "the snowballing Arab wrath ... will shake the ground from under their feet."

The Iraqi press and officials such as Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz have singled out Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Eqypt for attack. Aziz denounced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as a stooge of the Americans, and said Mubarak only appealed to President Clinton to end the air strikes because he feared the growing wave of popular opposition expressed in street demonstrations in Egypt and elsewhere.

The "no-fly zones" were imposed by the US, Britain and France in the Kurdish north of Iraq in 1991 and the Shiite south the following year. They were never sanctioned by UN resolutions.

Two weeks after the US and Britain launched their air assault on Iraq, it is generally recognized that 70 hours of intensive bombing produced questionable results from a military standpoint, while throwing imperialist policy in the Persian Gulf into deeper disarray.

The Pentagon's initial post-bombing assessment that fewer than a third of the 97 Iraqi targets had been severely damaged or destroyed provoked consternation in the American media and political establishment. On December 21 Marine General Anthony Zinni, who commanded the air assault, held a press conference to counter doubts about the military efficacy of the attack. Zinni declared that US and British forces had hit 85 percent of their targets. He further claimed that the bombardment had badly damaged Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, but he undercut this assertion with the admission that Republican Guard forces had abandoned their barracks and headquarters before the air strikes began.

Whatever its military success, the bombing campaign was a political failure. Its timing, on the eve of the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives, underscored the cynicism of the Clinton administration and further discredited its declared aims of promoting world peace and "degrading" Saddam Hussein's supposed arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. That the White House sacrificed Iraqi men, women and children in an attempt to conciliate its right-wing Republican opponents was underscored by a report in the December 23 New York Times that Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence sent Clinton a letter just prior to the onset of the air war, criticizing him for vacillating in the US assault on Baghdad.

US hopes that its high-tech missiles would either kill Saddam Hussein or shatter his security forces and undermine his regime were dashed when the Iraqi strongman emerged apparently unscathed and defiant. The circumstances surrounding the assault, moreover, undermined the pretense that Washington was merely carrying out the will of the "world community." The US and Britain acted in open defiance of the majority on the UN Security Council. The flagrant collusion between chief weapons inspector Richard Butler and the Clinton administration provided proof of UNSCOM's role as an appendage of the US State Department and the CIA.

The air war intensified the divisions between the major powers over US policy in the Persian Gulf. Russia and China immediately denounced the bombing campaign. Yeltsin recalled Russia's ambassadors to the US and Britain for several days--something that never occurred during the Cold War--and placed its naval forces on military alert. France called for the lifting of the oil embargo against Iraq, and joined with Russia and China in demanding the sacking of Richard Butler.

Washington's assertion of its right to take unilateral military action to support its global interests has further inflamed international relations. The mounting resentment of many US "allies" was indicated by Paul Quiles, former French defense minister and current chairman of the French National Assembly's defense committee. Quiles denounced the US for playing "world policeman" by attacking Iraq without UN approval. He charged that Washington was deliberately weakening the authority of the UN as part of a strategy "to turn NATO into a military organization with wider aims."

Pascal Boniface, director of the Institute for International and Strategic Studies in Paris, called for Europe to create a military counterforce to the US. "If Europe took on strategic autonomy," he said, "it could become the superpower of the twenty-first century."

In the aftermath of the bombing, the contradictions and absurdities of US policy toward Iraq are more glaring than ever. For months American officials, including Clinton, have acknowledged that an air war would mean the end of UNSCOM. Some have hinted that the US would even welcome such an outcome. But UNSCOM has served as the main fig leaf for Washington's policy of aggression. The US has relied on the weapons inspectors' claims of Iraqi noncompliance to justify military confrontation.

At the same time, American support for UNSCOM has provided a cover for its opposition to any easing of economic sanctions. It is not US intransigence, according to the official line, but the unbiased judgment of UNSCOM that determines Washington's attitude toward sanctions.

Now, as the US anticipated, Iraq has refused to permit UNSCOM to resume its operations. But Washington continues to demand the full enforcement of sanctions--responsible for incalculable human misery and death--without providing Iraq with any means for their eventual abolition.

US and British spokesmen are declaring they will enforce the sanctions, with or without UNSCOM, by carrying out further sneak attacks on the Iraqi people. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a speech after the conclusion of the air assault in which he demanded that the people of the world accept such wanton imperialist violence as the new "global reality."

But even the likes of Blair and Clinton know that repeated bombing does not of itself constitute a viable policy. Sooner, rather than later, the sanctions would collapse and countries such as France and Russia would resume economic relations with Iraq. The implications for the political destabilization of bourgeois regimes throughout the Middle East would, moreover, be incalculable, not to mention the inevitable growth of domestic opposition to such barbaric methods.

Hence the increasingly open turn to a policy of overthrowing the regime in Baghdad. This has long been the demand of the most right-wing and militaristic elements in the American political establishment, and Clinton, consistent with his entire tenure as president, is bending to their will.

In November, after Clinton called off an imminent air attack on Iraq, Henry Kissinger published a column in the Washington Post under the headline, "Bring Saddam Down." Kissinger demanded that Clinton set about arming and training an Iraqi opposition force, and give them a guarantee that American forces would be sent into Iraq to protect them, if necessary, from Hussein's military.

In the aftermath of this month's bombing campaign, the Wall Street Journal wrote with satisfaction that "the bombings were a reminder of the kind of force only America can project, and its willingness to use it." But it denounced the Clinton administration for not going far enough, saying America needed a strategy for "pacifying the Middle East."

The following day Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel Berger, announced that the White House would invite Iraqi opposition groups to a joint meeting in Washington early in the new year.

The turn to a policy of military-political coup represents a major escalation of US aggression in the Persian Gulf. The unraveling of the previous policy only heightens the element of recklessness within the US political establishment, and moves the world closer to direct US intervention in Iraq.

According to the United States European Command, Operation Northern Watch, "An SA-6 site near Talil fired 6-8 missiles at Southern Watch aircraft. F-16s retaliated by dropping six GBU-12 laser-guided bombs on the site. They also launched two HARMs "as a preemptive measure" to deter Iraqi radar operators."

WASHINGTON (AFPN - Air Force News Service) -- For the second time in three days, coalition air forces came under attack Dec. 30 and returned fire against a missile site in Iraq.

The latest incident, this one over southern Iraq, occurred at about 1:30 a.m. EST, 9:30 a.m. local time, near the town of Talil. The strikes were in response to Iraqi surface-to-air missiles launched at coalition aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone.

According to a Joint Task Force Southwest Asia spokesman, a coalition British GR-1 Tornado aircraft flying an Operation Southern Watch mission visually detected the launch of six to eight SA-6s from a SAM site southwest of Talil.

F-16CJ, F-16CG and EA-6B aircraft, operating from bases in the Southwest Asia region and on patrol, responded by firing two high-speed anti-radiation missiles and several GBU-12 500-pound precision guided munitions at about 2:15 a.m. EST. There were no coalition aircraft damaged during the incident and battle damage assessment is ongoing.

Coalition aircraft are part of Operation Southern Watch that enforces United Nations sanctions and restrictions of the no-fly zone south of the 33rd parallel in Iraq. Aircrews are authorized to use force in self-defense.

Two days earlier, coalition aircraft came under similar attack from a SAM site north of the town of Mosul in northern Iraq. In that encounter, coalition forces responded with HARMs and precision-guided munitions.

The AGM-88 HARM carried by F-16 aircraft is an air-to-surface tactical missile designed to seek and destroy enemy radar-equipped air defense systems.

According to the United States European Command, Operation Northern Watch,"The Iraqis fired three SAMs at Northern Watch aircraft; all missed. The planes retaliated by launching three HARMs."

Background to December - Ramadan U.S. Attack on Iraq

11/18/98: Washington presses ahead with war plans against Iraq -- Editorial Board, World Socialist Website

12/12/98: US moves B-52s towards Iraq -- Martin McLaughlin, World Socialist Website

12/18/98: UNSCOM aided Pentagon targeting: Controversy mounts over role of UN inspectors in Iraq -- Martin McLaughlin, World Socialist Website

12/24/98: Agents provocateur: the activities of Richard Butler and UNSCOM -- Peter Symonds, World Socialist Website

The launching of US air and missile attacks on Iraq is a measure both of the desperation of the Clinton administration and of the criminal recklessness and bellicosity of American imperialism. Thousands of Iraqi lives are to be sacrificed, for the short-term goal of preserving Clinton's presidency, and for the long-term goal of maintaining US dominance in the oil-rich Middle East.

The timing of the attack, on the eve of the impeachment debate and vote in the House of Representatives, is clearly bound up with the political crisis of the Clinton White House. As he has throughout this political crisis, at every point when his presidency has been threatened, Clinton has sought to appease his right-wing opponents with the threat or use of military force.

In February, after the eruption of the Lewinsky affair, amid a media barrage aimed at forcing his resignation, Clinton seized on a conflict with Iraq over the activity of United Nations weapons inspectors to go to the brink of military action. In August, only three days after his testimony before the grand jury convened by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, Clinton launched cruise missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan.

After going to the brink with Iraq again on November 15, Clinton was widely denounced by congressional Republicans when he called off planned air strikes, with B-52s already in the air headed for Baghdad. Republican senators openly called for the US government to set as its goal the overthrow and murder of Saddam Hussein. Only a few days ago, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, who is spearheading the impeachment drive, baited the White House over its failure to oust the Iraqi leader.

If the timing of the attack is based on political expediency, however, the military action flows directly and inexorably from American policy in the region. For nearly eight years, since the end of the Persian Gulf war, the United States has maintained a death grip over this largely devastated and militarily defenseless country. The sanctions regime imposed through the United Nations has killed an estimated half a million children, depriving them of food, medicine and other basic necessities.

The official pretext for the economic embargo, the claim that a country largely without electric power and running water was nonetheless stockpiling nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, is an utter fraud. No evidence that Iraq currently possesses weapons of mass destruction has ever been presented by the US or the US-controlled UNSCOM inspectors. Instead, Iraq has been required to do the impossible--prove the nonexistence of such weapons in a territory the size of Texas with a population of 20 million people. There have even been demands that Iraq rid itself of the "capability" of producing such weapons, which would mean, given the flexibility of modern technology, that Iraq must revert to pre-industrial conditions.

It is a measure of the cynicism of the American political establishment and the corporate-controlled media that Clinton's lies about a trivial matter, his affair with Monica Lewinsky, have been declared an impeachable offense, while his repetition of gross, obvious and, in the full sense of the word, criminal lies about Iraq is accepted and endorsed. Indeed, if any of Clinton's Republican opponents were the occupant of the White House, the lies would be just as brazen and the military aggression just as flagrant.

In the propaganda of 1998, "weapons of mass destruction" occupies the same place that the "domino theory" and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution occupied during the Vietnam War. And the former antiwar protester of the 1960s seeks to save himself through the slaughter of innocent Iraqi people.

The latest confrontation with Iraq was deliberately instigated by UNSCOM, which functions quite openly as an instrument of the US government, regularly reporting on its spying activities to the American CIA. Its most provocative action, taken last week, was an attempt to invade the Baghdad headquarters of the ruling Ba'ath Party. Under conditions where the CIA is seeking to organize both the overthrow of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq and the assassination of Saddam Hussein, UNSCOM officials knew that Iraqi authorities would block an inspection, thus creating the pretext for American air strikes.

The real driving force of the US military intervention against Iraq is the effort by American imperialism to assert its strategic interests in the region. Joined only by its most loyal international stooge, the British Labour Party government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, the US government is seeking to secure for American corporate interests the lion's share of the profits in the exploitation of the two greatest reservoirs of oil on the planet, the Middle East and Central Asia.

There is an ominous logic to the American military moves against Iraq. While little information is yet available, there have been reports of "heavy and sustained bombing" and of air strikes against the positions occupied by Iraq's Republican Guard, the principal conventional military force which survived the gulf war onslaught. Such measures, which have nothing to do with concern for "weapons of mass destruction," would be carried out for the purpose of clearing the way for the invasion and military occupation of Iraq by US ground troops. Indeed, no other military action could be envisioned to carry out the declared goal of US foreign policy, which Clinton reiterated in his Wednesday night speech, the establishment of a new, US-dominated government in Baghdad.

In addition to the longstanding US designs on the Persian Gulf, which were the basis for the Bush administration's decision to go to war over Kuwait in 1990-91, the Clinton administration has been deeply involved in jockeying for control of the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union that surround the Caspian Sea, which are believed to have the largest untapped gas and oil reserves in the world.

A bitter struggle is raging between the major capitalist powers over the location and control of the pipelines that will deliver these resources to the world market. Seeing potential advantages in the dismemberment of Iraq and the stationing of American troops so close to the new oilfields, both the Clinton administration and its Republican adversaries now embrace the goal of overthrowing and removing Saddam Hussein, which was rejected by George Bush in 1991 as both unfeasible and undesirable from the standpoint of US interests.

It is these fundamental economic and strategic considerations, and not Clinton's political maneuvers, which are at the root of the aggression against Iraq. Once again it is being made clear that the basic threat to world peace is American imperialism, and its demented belief that with B-52s and cruise missiles it can do as it pleases anywhere in the world.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the assault on Iraq--and there is no doubt that what is unfolding is a colossal human tragedy--the drive by American capitalism to war must lead ultimately to disaster, not only for its victims overseas, but for the working class youth who will be mobilized to kill or be killed for the profit interests of the corporate and financial elite. Yet the latest US military actions proceed without a single dissenting voice in the political establishment, without any critical examination by the subservient mass media. Working people must oppose these military strikes and demand an end both to the aggression against Iraq and to the continued US/UN policy of starving the Iraqi people.

Those who are responsible for the bombing of Iraq are writing a shameful chapter in American history. Hundreds of Iraqi men, women and children have already been killed or maimed by American bombs and cruise missiles. The death toll from the air war will mount far higher. Even the Pentagon had predicted more than 10,000 would be killed in an onslaught of only medium intensity, let alone in the full-scale attack which was unleashed on December 16.

Putting aside for a moment the reactionary aims being pursued by the Clinton Administration, the massive disparity between the resources of the United States and those of Iraq endows a nightmarish and criminal character to the actions taken by the Pentagon. What is unfolding today in the Middle East resembles not so much a war as a state-sanctioned execution. But in this case, the victim is not an individual, strapped helplessly to a gurney, but rather the unarmed population of a defenseless country.

The White House, the Pentagon, the Congress, and, of course, the media sing hymns of praise to "our heroic men and women in the Persian Gulf." In reality, every American should feel deeply ashamed of what these "heroes" are being ordered to do in the name of the United States. "Heroism," at a minimum, involves a serious element of risk and danger. "Heroes" are not those who are willing to kill, but who are prepared to die. On the basis of this definition, the people of Baghdad are far more deserving of respect and admiration than those who are tormenting them from the relative safety of their high-tech murder machines.

There is nothing particularly courageous about placing one’s finger on a button to launch a cruise missile, while floating on a naval vessel in the Persian Gulf or flying a B-52 bomber 1,000 miles from Baghdad.

In 1991 American soldiers in the Persian Gulf War had a lower death rate than their counterparts who stayed home. More died of traffic accidents than from Iraqi weapons. During the last seven years, the risks facing American military personnel have been even further reduced. US weaponry has been upgraded and Iraq’s defenses have been virtually destroyed. Moreover, American pilots are guided to their targets by intelligence provided by UN weapons inspectors and spy satellites which have scoured the Iraqi landscape continuously for the past eight years.

As for the commanders who are in charge of this sordid operation, history will judge them in much the same way as it does the scoundrels who supervised the genocidal slaughter of the Indians in the 1870s and 1880s. This much is certain: 50 years from now no one will be making films like Patton, The Longest Day or Saving Pvt. Ryan about their exploits.

One need not agree with the politics of such World War II-era commanders as Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and Nimitz to acknowledge that they, at least, led their armies against an enemy fully capable of firing back. Today's generals are nothing more than bureaucrats of mass slaughter, working their way up the Pentagon hierarchy, spending a term at the top issuing orders to destroy helpless populations, then retiring to well-paid positions on corporate boards or as "consultants" to the TV networks covering the next American blitzkrieg.

The horrors of World War II evoked searing images that profoundly influenced the political consciences of several generations. Next to those produced by the opening of the Nazi death camps, the most unforgettable images were those of the German Luftwaffe raining bombs on defenseless populations--above Warsaw, Rotterdam, and, most infamous of all, the Basque village of Guernica. It was this last atrocity that was transformed on the canvas of Picasso into a universally-recognized expression of outrage against the inhumanity of fascism.

Even though the United States was, for the most part, spared much of the on-the-ground horrors of World War II, the event which brought America into the war--the bombing of Pearl Harbor--deeply aroused public opinion. There is, from the standpoint of historical analysis, little doubt that the Roosevelt Administration skillfully maneuvered the Japanese government into a situation in which it had little choice but to go to war against the United States. But the manner in which Japan initiated hostilities--bombing Pearl Harbor without warning--outraged millions. For decades to come, the phrase "sneak attack" was synonymous with the basest form of treachery. Nearly 20 years after the end of World War II, in 1962, during the missile crisis, among the reasons given by Robert Kennedy for opposing an invasion of Cuba was that such an action would require a "sneak attack" that would blacken America’s historic reputation.

And yet, in 1998, the US government--without any fear of public objection--declares openly that the bombing of Iraq began without warning, let alone a formal declaration of war!

In no other supposedly democratic country is there such a restricted range of political expression. A resolution endorsing the military onslaught was passed by the House of Representatives with only five dissenting votes.

The mass media--television, newspapers, radio--are thoroughly integrated into the US war machine. There is no serious attempt to evaluate the impact of the air raids or to communicate to the American people the terrifying reality of modern war. The media parrots the crudest Pentagon propaganda, presenting the prospect of an antiseptic, risk-free war, in which thousands of bombs and missiles can strike Iraq but kill only a few dozen people.

The real death toll in that battered and starved country can be better estimated by considering the blast which leveled the US embassy in Kenya. If one primitive bomb, weighing about as much as a single US cruise missile, could kill nearly 300 people, what is to be expected from the impact of thousands of such weapons striking Baghdad, a metropolis the size of Chicago?

The Clinton administration’s onslaught against Iraq takes advantage of the political confusion which prevails in the working class, exploiting naive patriotic sentiments and concern for sons and daughters who joined the military, in large measure, because of a lack of economic opportunity.

But the White House and the Pentagon are well aware of the great reservoir of potential hostility to a new Gulf war. They learned this in February, during the dress rehearsal for the current attack, when administration spokesmen were denounced at a public forum on the Iraq crisis at Ohio State University. The subsequent decision to launch air strikes without prior warnings or a lengthy media buildup was made, not so much to gain tactical surprise in Iraq, but to present the American people with a fait accompli.

No lie is too brazen, no explanation too absurd for the American media. The contradictions in the official cover story mount from day to day. When Clinton announced the attacks, he said their target was Iraq’s mythical "weapons of mass destruction" – nuclear, chemical and biological. But US spokesmen now concede that not a single such facility has been hit by US warplanes and cruise missiles. The reason given by the Pentagon – a barefaced lie – is concern that Iraqi civilians could be killed by the release of chemical or biological agents. The real reason is that there are no weapons production facilities or stockpiles, and the US military will not waste bombs or missiles on facilities that do not exist.

The real targets of the bombing are Iraq’s conventional military assets--troops, tanks, antiaircraft weapons--and its industrial infrastructure. What the Pentagon calls the "capability" to produce chemical or biological weapons are breweries, dairies, pesticide factories and other facilities engaged in food-processing and chemical manufacturing, commonplace in any industrialized society.

Once the truth emerges about the real nature of the US war against Iraq, a wave of revulsion will be felt in the United States.

Jean Marie Benjamin, a priest at a Christian humanitarian foundation in Iraq, on Monday confirmed Iraqi government reports of heavy civilian casualties and denounced the Western media for concealing the devastating impact on innocent men, women and children of last week’s US-British air assault.

Benjamin left Baghdad after the four-day bomb attack. He said he personally saw children hospitalized for burns undergoing operations without the benefit of anesthesia. He further charged that the so-called smart bombs had destroyed houses, hospitals and other nonmilitary facilities, and killed hundreds of victims.

The barrage of 400 cruise missiles and 650 sorties against a defenseless country took a terrible toll. Baghdad has officially acknowledged 62 soldiers killed and 180 injured. For its own reasons, the Iraqi government has given no precise account of the number of civilian dead and wounded and the extent of damage to civilian facilities. But Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said on Monday the brunt of the air strikes had been born by civilians.

Casualties among civilians were "much, much higher" than among military personnel, Aziz said. Declaring: "They want to … strip Iraq of any serious industrial capabilities," Aziz recalled the statement of former Secretary of State James Baker, who told him in 1991, "We will bring you back to the pre-industrial age."

Nizar Hamdoon, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN on Sunday that "thousands of Iraqis" had been killed or wounded in the air raids.

In addition to Republican Guard barracks, presidential palaces, Ba’ath Party headquarters, air defense installations, communications facilities, intelligence centers, missile factories and an oil refinery, US missiles struck colleges, post offices, dormitories and a museum, according to the Iraqi government.

The carnage inflicted by American and British hi-tech weapons of mass destruction has compounded the death and suffering caused by eight years of crippling economic sanctions. Last October Denis Halliday, head of UN humanitarian operations in Iraq, resigned his post in protest over the refusal of the UN, under pressure from Washington, to lift the sanctions.

He told a briefing in Washington that UN estimates of 5,000 to 6,000 Iraqi children dying every month as a result of the sanctions were "probably modest." He attributed the death toll to a lack of clean water, a breakdown in the sanitation system, inadequate diet and a lack of medical care.

According to the UN’s own figures, the sanctions are responsible for an increase of 90,000 deaths per year. Various reports estimate that between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi children have died since 1990 as a result of the sanctions.

The US government has no doubt made an estimate of Iraqi civilian dead and wounded from the 70-hour bombing campaign. When the US was on the verge of launching the air war in mid-November, the Pentagon advised Clinton that the "rolling" attacks would possibly kill 10,000 Iraqis. "That was the medium case scenario," one administration official said at the time.

The Clinton administration, with the complicity of the mass media, is remaining silent on the civilian toll from the air war in keeping with its general policy of concealing from the American public the human impact of its vendetta against Iraq.

According to the United States European Command, Operation Northern Watch,"Following an UNSCOM report detailing continued Iraqi obstruction, the US and Great Britain conducted a four-day aerial bombing campaign, nicknamed Desert Fox. Northern Watch aircraft did not participate."

U.S. President Clinton Allegedly Orders Aerial Bombing on Iraq and then Pulls Back.

According to the United States European Command, Operation Northern Watch, "President Clinton ordered air attacks on Iraq but canceled the order the following morning, as planes were in the air, following an Iraqi promise the UN weapons inspectors could resume work."

Wednesday's [July 1st] missile attack by an American jet on an Iraqi anti-aircraft battery near Basra has all of the earmarks of a renewed effort by Washington to manufacture a confrontation with Baghdad.

The incident coincides with deliberations by the United Nations Security Council on whether the draconian sanctions imposed on the country in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War should be maintained indefinitely, or phased out in the near future. Of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the US and Britain oppose any move toward ending the sanctions, while France, Russia and China have adopted a more conciliatory stance.

According to the Pentagon, a US F-16 jet fired the missile after Iraqi forces aimed radar at one of four British jets patrolling the "no flight" zone imposed by the UN over southern Iraq. The F-16 was accompanying the British planes and five other American jets on patrol just north of Basra. The US says the missile missed its target. Iraq has denounced the attack as "an aggressive and unjustifiable action," and reports that the missile struck a drinking water reservoir near Basra.

Earlier this year the US was frustrated in its plans to launch a massive air assault on Iraq by the agreement reached with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Since then it has cut back its military presence in the region, but still maintains 20,000 troops and 22 warships in the Gulf.

The missile attack, the first US military action inside Iraq since 1996, is the latest in a series of recent events that have further roiled relations between Baghdad and western governments, and provided the American media and politicians with ammunition to whip up public opinion against Iraq. The sequence of happenings points to a deliberate campaign of provocation on the part of Washington.

Richard Butler, the executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the body charged with ridding Iraq of "weapons of mass destruction," visited Baghdad from June 11 to June 15 to work out a disarmament schedule that could open the way for the removal of sanctions. Butler has in the past toed the American line, continually placing new obstacles in the way of Iraqi compliance and insisting that Baghdad prove the unprovable, i.e., the non-existence of chemical and biological weapons or the means of producing them.

When he returned from his Baghdad trip in mid-June, however, Butler announced that the Iraqis were cooperating with UNSCOM inspectors and suggested that the search for weapons could be completed in a few months, opening the way for the lifting of sanctions. Butler was clearly pointing toward October, when the UN Security Council will next formally decide on whether or not the sanctions should be extended. His remarks evoked a bitter response from the Clinton administration and the US media.

Three days later Butler submitted a report to the Security Council that, inexplicably, clashed with his remarks of June 15. His June 18 report denounced the Iraqis for withholding information, singling out Baghdad's alleged refusal to answer questions about the production of VX nerve gas.

Less than a week later, on June 23, the Pentagon announced that US army lab scientists had isolated "significant amounts" of VX nerve gas from fragments of Iraqi missile warheads discovered near Baghdad last March by UNSCOM inspectors. This made for banner headlines and chilling exposés on network news programs. The news accounts for the most part buried or concealed entirely the fact that the warheads had been produced prior to the Gulf War, and were subsequently destroyed by the Iraqis in accordance with UN demands. Baghdad disputed the US army test results, claiming it had never succeeded in developing VX nerve gas of sufficient stability to place on missile warheads.

France, Russia and China let it be known that the lab results had been leaked by UNSCOM and the US government in violation of UN procedures, which require that such information be reported only to the Security Council.

US officials pounced on the Pentagon announcement as vindication of Washington's intractable policy toward Iraq. Clinton declared, "Let the inspections go forward and don't lift the sanctions until the resolutions are complied with." Bill Richardson, the US ambassador to the UN, gloated that the report " will set back Iraq's efforts to try to lift sanctions." State Department spokesman James Rubin added, "It appears to be another case of UNSCOM having overcome Iraq's deceit on what it has done and it is doing."

The US missile attack, coming one week after the nerve gas allegations, is the culmination, to date, of a systematic campaign to block the lifting of sanctions.

With the military buildup against Iraq nearly complete, the next phase of US war preparations will be launched February 17 with a televised speech by Clinton, delivered from the Pentagon. This address is to be followed on the 18th by a televised "town meeting" at Ohio State University, headed up by the secretaries of State and Defense and Clinton's national security adviser.

Clinton has scheduled his speech for noon, evidently guided by the desire to feed the networks selected sound bites for their evening news telecasts. The following day's forum in Ohio will be orchestrated to create an illusion of public discussion, while the government, aided by the corporate-controlled media, intensifies its drive to stampede the American people behind a new assault that will maim and kill countless thousands of Iraqi civilians. The citizen participants at Wednesday's "town meeting" will, no doubt, be carefully vetted.

Clinton is being criticized in some quarters for failing to clearly explain the rationale behind a new bombing attack on Iraq, but those within Congress and the media who criticize are no more able to explain the purpose for a new war than the president. This is in large measure because the real reasons have nothing to do with the official mantra -- the supposed need to control a despot and destroy his ability to wield "weapons of mass destruction."

Lacking even George Bush's 1990-91 pretext of defending "little Kuwait," US spokesmen can only present as fact entirely unsubstantiated claims of chemical and biological weapons production, and declare that if the coming round of carpet bombing doesn't somehow eliminate the supposed danger, then the US will simply bomb again. One thing is certain: they cannot come before the American people and speak of the real war aims, i.e., the need to defend the interests of US-based oil companies and other transnationals, and position the US military for future wars in that strategic region.

This week's media side show highlights the entirely undemocratic process by which a tiny economic and political elite in America makes decisions -- such as the decision to go to war -- with potentially catastrophic implications for masses of people. This time around there is neither the formality of congressional debate nor the pretense of opposition to aggression from within either of the two big business parties.

No less cynical than the pretense of public debate at home is Washington's claim to be seeking a diplomatic settlement. In reality, its entire negotiating stance is calculated to block a peaceful resolution.

The US is not engaged in negotiations at all. Negotiations presuppose that both sides are prepared to bend. Even if one were to assume that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, in a genuine negotiation the Iraqis would get some benefit for agreeing to their destruction. The US would be discussing such questions as a date certain for termination of the sanctions, interim measures to lessen the impact of the embargo, guarantees for the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, etc.

But the Americans declare all such issues to be out of bounds. They are involved, in other words, in ultimatums, not diplomacy or negotiations. As one US official told the Wall Street Journal, describing international contacts with Saddam Hussein, "We've all agreed: the most difficult situation is if he complies."

As the military assault nears, the real dimensions of the planned strikes against Iraq, and the wider implications of the impending war, are beginning to emerge. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, just returned from a tour of the Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms, declared on national television Sunday that US air strikes would target not only suspected chemical and biological weapons facilities, but all military installations housing forces which could threaten neighboring countries. This formulation would legitimize dropping a bomb on tens of thousands of buildings in Iraq.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan declared that an American air attack on Iraq would set an important precedent for the treatment of other "rogue states," among which he included Iran and Libya. In other words, the US government is developing a rationale for preemptive military action against any nation which runs afoul of the foreign policy objectives of American imperialism.

Congressional Republicans demanded more ambitious goals for the operation, including the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the outright dismemberment and occupation of Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott suggested targeting Saddam Hussein in the bombing raids, while Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas urged the expansion of the present "no-fly" zones into "no-drive" zones in which all Iraqi government vehicles would be hit with air strikes.

Workers must take to heart these declarations. They give an indication of the incendiary trajectory of American foreign policy.

The only force that can prevent ever wider and more bloody eruptions of militarism is the international working class, fighting as a united force, independently of all capitalist regimes and leaderships.

US workers, in particular, must not allow themselves to be dragged into a new imperialist war carried out to further the global profit interests of American big business. They should understand that a new war in the Persian Gulf is only the beginning. The aims of Wall Street and the Pentagon ultimately require the military occupation of entire countries and regions of the world, for which purpose countless thousands of youth and workers are to be sacrificed.

Clinton's brief for war in the Persian Gulf: The truth behind the White House lies

The Clinton administration is preparing a cowardly attack on the people of Iraq in which countless innocent lives will be sacrificed to further the interests of American big business. This is the reality behind the efforts of the president and his top advisers to create the illusion of a popular consensus for savaging an already shattered nation.

The onslaught against Iraq was decided long ago behind the backs of the American people, and a massive military strike force has already been assembled to carry it out. The White House and the military are counting on the lack of opposition in Congress, the subservience of the media and the distracted and politically disoriented state of mind of a misinformed public to block the emergence of any organized opposition.

Clinton's February 17th speech defending his war policy was delivered not to a prime time television audience, nor from the traditional setting for a major address to the nation, the Oval Office. Rather it took the form of a midday speech to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Vice President Gore made a point of introducing Clinton as the Commander In Chief.

The choice of venue was no accident. It underscored the determination of the US to ride roughshod over diplomatic conventions and use its military might to bully and intimidate not only Iraq, but any nation that might in the future stand in the way of American imperialist aims.

It reflected, moreover, the concern of the administration over the president's poor standing among the Pentagon brass, and its efforts to assuage doubts within the military over the efficacy of Clinton's policy in the Persian Gulf. The fact that the speech would be seen by a relative handful of people was considered of little consequence.

It is a measure of the contempt for democratic processes that this address, given primarily for the benefit of the officer corps, the corporate and political elite, and the media, was passed off as the high point of the public "debate" over whether the country should launch a full-scale air war.

In so far as the address was an attempt to justify the impending assault on Iraq, it consisted of a series of half-truths and outright lies. It began with a fantastic depiction of America and the world on the eve of the 21st century. The cold war was over, democracy was on the rise, peace and prosperity for all were around the corner. Only one obstacle stood in the way--what Clinton called "outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals."

He continued: "We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

Reality at the end of the 20th century is, of course, a far cry from the idyllic picture painted by Clinton. Aside from the very small fraction of the American people who have reaped unprecedented wealth from the boom in share values and corporate profits, the bulk of the population enters the 21st century burdened by falling living standards, worsening economic insecurity and all of the scourges of a society in decline--crime, poverty, homelessness, disease. The growth of social inequality is, moreover, not simply an American, but rather an international phenomenon.

No less implausible is the attempt to blame the ills of the world on a conspiracy of evil tyrants and terrorists. This tactic of creating a political bogeyman to justify US aggression is nothing new. The same device has been used in advance of every military intervention of the past fifteen years--from Grenada, to Panama, to Somalia to Iraq.

But there was something particularly sinister in Clinton's opening remarks last Tuesday. He did more than present a rationalization for attacking Iraq. He presented a brief for a Pax Americana in the next century, to be policed by a US military machine that assumes the right to attack any nation that interferes with Wall Street's definition of America's "national interest" and international "law and order."

When Clinton declared Saddam Hussein's Iraq to be an example of the "rogue states" that must be isolated and crushed, he was making the case for a whole series of military interventions in the coming months and years, which must inevitably lead to full-scale wars, military occupations and, ultimately, a new global conflagration.

The secret behind Washington's hostility to any diplomatic settlement is precisely its desire to set a precedent that will be used to intimidate both its enemies and its current allies abroad, and to inure the American people to acts of mass murder carried out in their name.

While Clinton declared that he was acting in defense of the US "national interest," nowhere in his speech did he explain the meaning of this phrase. But National Security Adviser Samuel Berger spelled it out in a speech February 13. Washington was intervening in the Gulf, he said, "to protect the free flow of oil."

In other words, the US is going to war to reaffirm the domination of corporate America over a region which accounts for 75 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, on which Washington's economic rivals in Western Europe and Japan depend. A permanent military presence in this region provides US imperialism with a vital strategic advantage.

Clinton boasted that the continuing economic embargo has cost Iraq $110 billion in oil revenues over the past seven years. This exultation over the economic havoc wreaked by the sanctions gives the lie to US claims that its policies are directed against Saddam Hussein and not the Iraqi people. What does $110 billion mean in human terms? It translates into food, medical supplies, drinkable water, access to electrical power--the rudiments of civilized life for 23 million people.

The impending bombing raids will likewise target the entire population of Iraq. All those familiar with US war plans predict massive civilian casualties. Only a few hours after Clinton's speech, NBC News suggested that Saddam Hussein might move kindergarten classes into his biological weapons factories--an attempt to prepare the American public for the sight of hundreds of Iraqi children murdered by American bombs. The same news broadcast reported that targets will include dairies, pharmaceutical plants and breweries situated in densely populated urban areas. ABC News reported that the initial bombing raids will last anywhere from four days to several weeks.

As Clinton made clear in his speech, these attacks may be only the beginning. "We will be prepared to strike him again," he declared.

In concluding his remarks, Clinton said, "Saddam Hussein's Iraq reminds us of what we learned in the 20th century and warns us of what we must know about the 21st."

What, indeed, does the 20th century have to teach us? Twice the world was plunged into global wars which cost the lives of millions. In the five decades since the end of the Second World War, millions more have died in innumerable conflicts, most notably in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East. These wars have been launched, not by "the people," but by rival cliques of capitalist rulers seeking to gain strategic and territorial advantages and control of raw materials and markets.

We call on workers throughout the world, and first of all in the United States, to oppose this brutal aggression against a defenseless people.

The Iraqi people are not your enemy. They are not responsible for the downsizing, wage-cutting and gutting of social programs that have slashed your living standards. They have not made profits off of the social distress of working people.

The entire working class must take a warning from the brutality of American capitalism. Only the independent struggle of the international working class against the profit system can put an end to militarism and war.

The agreement between UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Saddam Hussein, announced February 22, is a political setback for American imperialism and the Clinton administration’s plans for an air war against Iraq. It by no means, however, ends the danger of US aggression in the Persian Gulf, or a general growth of militarism among the major capitalist powers.

Clinton and his top national security and military aides could not conceal their bitterness and disappointment as the president announced tentative acceptance of the UN-brokered deal at the White House Monday afternoon. In response to press questions suggesting his administration had caved in to Iraq and the UN, Clinton reaffirmed that American troops, planes and warships will remain in the Persian Gulf and that attacks will be ordered "at a time of our choosing ... unilaterally" if and when a new confrontation with Iraq arises.

Annan reached the agreement to resume inspections by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in the face of US opposition to his mission. The State Department initially sought to block Annan’s trip to Baghdad, then tried to sabotage the negotiations by threatening a US veto if an "unacceptable" deal was reached with Saddam Hussein.

In this instance the UN became the vehicle for sections of the European bourgeoisie whose imperialist interests in the Gulf have brought them into conflict with American policy. They, in turn, were backed by most of the Arab bourgeois regimes, which fear the social upheavals that might be unleashed within their own borders by a new US assault on the Iraqi people. Over the weekend, even before an attack, there were protests in Egypt and riots in Jordan, as a US air strike with heavy Iraqi casualties appeared imminent.

Annan’s trip was taken at the urging of France in particular, and Paris hailed the deal with Iraq. French transnational corporations have large investments in Iraq’s oil industry and stand to benefit enormously from a lifting of UN sanctions. Similarly, the Yeltsin regime in Russia, the other major sponsor of Annan’s mission, has definite economic and strategic interests in Iraq, a country whose northernmost oil fields are only 200 miles from the Russian border.

Washington’s failure to prevent an agreement reflects the deterioration in the world position of American imperialism in the seven years since the Persian Gulf War. It has proven impossible for Washington to maintain the US-led coalition of the major capitalist powers, the Arab states and Israel, with the tacit backing of Russia and China, which George Bush assembled in 1990-91.

That coalition was cobbled together by means of threats, opportunist maneuvers and outright bribery, under conditions in which the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union was disintegrating but the old US-led Cold War alliance of the major imperialist powers was still in place. These exceptional historical circumstances gave the United States a virtually free hand to operate in the Middle East.

The past seven years have seen the steady erosion of the political hegemony which American imperialism enjoyed over its capitalist rivals during the Cold War. The European countries as well as Japan have begun to pursue their own agenda in one sphere after another: trade and monetary policy, relations with the former Soviet Union, and diplomacy in global hot spots such as Bosnia, the Middle East and Cuba.

Serious political miscalculations, concerning both the strength of American imperialism’s position internationally and the level of popular support for its war policy at home, also played a role in forcing the US, for the present, to pull back. To a considerable extent US policy makers, entranced by the firepower of their military hardware, came to believe that they could settle all questions simply through force of arms. In the end, this simple-minded infatuation with the military option left the US with little room to maneuver.

At the same time, the Clinton administration, the Republicans and the media were all taken aback by the demonstration of deep hostility to military action against the Iraqi people which surfaced at the Ohio State University "town meeting" last week, and continued in the form of protest demonstrations and confrontations with administration officials thereafter.

Even more than the signs of American imperialism’s isolation abroad, the indications of social and political dissent within the US began to prompt warnings from within the political establishment over the explosive implications of Washington’s bellicose policy in the Gulf.

The deep divisions within the American ruling class were expressed, in part, in criticism of Clinton by fellow Democrats. Former President Jimmy Carter denounced the planned bombing of Iraq, saying that as many as 100,000 innocent civilians might be killed. Carter’s former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski attacked the administration’s demonization of Saddam Hussein, saying that it was "demagogy ... to speak of a dictator of a third-world country of 22 million people that has been pulverized and impoverished as a new Hitler."

Neither Carter and Brzezinski nor the French and other European imperialists have opposed Clinton’s war plans out of sympathy for the plight of the Iraqi people. What they do share, however, is anxiety that the reckless use of American military force can produce unforeseen and explosive consequences.

The latest diplomatic maneuvers do not mean that war in the Persian Gulf is off the agenda. The huge US military force in the region is being maintained at full alert for the next several months, and US officials emphasized that air strikes against Iraq could be ordered on a few hours’ notice if the administration decides that Iraq is not carrying out its agreement with the UN. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who denied earlier in the week that any reservists would be required for the Gulf, announced Sunday that some transportation and support units were being activated.

Clinton emphasized the necessity to verify Iraqi compliance in practice as soon as possible, by sending UNSCOM inspectors to every disputed site. Given that the majority of UNSCOM personnel are military and intelligence officers on loan from the American and British governments, there will be plenty of opportunity to stage new provocations as a pretext for war.

More fundamentally, the danger of war is implicit in the crisis-ridden state of international relations, as well as the deepening social contradictions within the US and every other capitalist nation. The present war buildup has exposed both the fragility of world "peace," and the extraordinary degree of political instability, not only in the Middle East but also in the centers of world capitalism, above all the United States.

The outcome of the present stalemate in the Persian Gulf will be an exacerbation of international tensions and a deepening of the political crisis of the Clinton administration at home.

American imperialism, frustrated and angered over the immediate situation in the Gulf, is bound to become even more bellicose. For Washington, war is not merely a means, but an end. American capitalism, facing mounting foreign competition and a deepening social crisis at home, sees its unchallenged military superiority as the decisive card which must be played while there is still time.

Hence the venomous tone of the recriminations that have already begun over Clinton’s failure to carry through on his threats to bomb Iraq, and his subordination of military action to UN diplomacy. "It is ridiculous for us to make a serious matter of national interest hostage to negotiations conducted by the secretary general of the United Nations," said right-wing columnist William Kristol. Congressmen, both Democratic and Republican, declared that the lesson of the UN agreement was the need for the US to get rid of Saddam Hussein once and for all.

At the same time, the political crisis of the Clinton administration is certain to escalate in the aftermath of the UN-Iraq agreement. The Monica Lewinsky scandal will once again come to the fore, and the combined assault of the independent counsel and the media on the White House will be stepped up.

Whether in the Persian Gulf or somewhere else, the next military crisis is not far off, and at some point the growth of imperialist rivalries and social tensions will explode with incalculable and tragic consequences. Events such as those unfolding in the Persian Gulf must serve to remind workers everywhere of a profound historical truth—the root cause of war is the insoluble character of the contradictions of the capitalist system.

There is only one social force that can counter the growth of imperialist militarism and, ultimately, a new world war, and that is the international working class, armed with a socialist perspective.

A technical error recently provided a glimpse into the workings and mentality of the American media. On February 20, as war fever raged in Washington, CBS News anchorman Dan Rather and Baghdad correspondent David Martin were caught rehearsing coverage of a US bombing raid on Baghdad. For twenty minutes the test report, intended to be seen only in the network’s New York and Washington newsrooms, was mistakenly beamed to a satellite where it could be picked up by anyone with the required receiving equipment.

The incident became public--although not widely covered by the media--when Bill McClure, master control operator at an NBC affiliate in Parkersburg, West Virginia, picked up the transmission and telephoned Associated Press to see if an attack on Iraq had indeed been launched. "It looked like a real broadcast of what was going on," he told the news agency.

The CBS News anchorman, in pancake makeup, could be seen describing the bombing raid and the type of aircraft involved. He declared that the number of Iraqi casualties was unknown.

An explanation from a CBS spokeswoman made the incident, if anything, even more chilling. She said the network wanted to test new graphics and theme music that would be used to cover the attack.

"It felt like Wag the Dog," commented a senior news producer who had watched the rehearsal. "I bet the network is living in fear that someone on the receiving end of the transmission had tape rolling."

As Clinton prepares new pretext for war: Congressmen call for sabotage and assassination against Iraq

The response of the White House and Congress to the UN-brokered deal with Iraq has been to intensify US provocations against Iraq, complete with public demands for sabotage of the country’s infrastructure, covert action to topple the regime in Baghdad, and a concerted effort to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

Since the announcement of the agreement on February 22, the bitter opposition within the American ruling class has taken essentially two forms. Clinton administration officials have officially endorsed the pact, while all but announcing their intention to subvert it, place the blame on the Iraqi regime, and proceed with their plans for a massive bombing attack.

On Monday the US pushed a resolution through the UN Security Council warning of "serious consequences" should Iraq do anything deemed to be in violation of its pledge to allow unfettered UN inspections. This resolution, as far as Washington is concerned, is a carte blanche for a military assault.

Among a considerable section of Congress, Democrats as well as Republicans, there has been even less of an attempt than in the White House to conceal the prevailing mood of anger at having been thwarted in showing off US firepower and demonstrating Washington’s readiness to use it against a civilian population.

Within hours of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s announcement of the agreement, Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) took the floor of the Senate to demand that the US officially adopt a policy of covert action, sabotage and intensified sanctions to "bring Saddam Hussein to his knees." He proposed that the US set up an Iraqi government-in-exile, expand its no-flight zones to cover the entire country and establish a naval blockade.

Specter’s basic theme—that no agreement with the Iraqi regime is possible, and the US should openly set about installing its own puppet government—was echoed with increasing stridency in the ensuing days. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) on February 25 accused Annan of "appeasement," and denounced Clinton for capitulating to Hussein. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, compared Annan’s mission to Baghdad to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s cave-in to Hitler in Munich in 1938. Gerald Solomon (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said, "Kofi Annan really sold us down the drain."

The public response of the Clinton administration to Republican criticism was to suggest that the UN-brokered agreement will assist Washington in rallying international support for a military strike in the not-too-distant future. The White House has already proclaimed that the US has the right to launch immediate and unilateral military strikes in the event of an alleged Iraqi violation of the agreement, and Clinton officials have made it clear they expect the agreement to break down.

"If this does not work," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said last Thursday, "then the whole world will have seen Saddam Hussein renege on an agreement that he made and we will have more support for using other methods—military force."

Albright said the White House agreed with proposals, mainly but not exclusively from Republicans, to set up a "Radio Free Iraq" and step up support for Iraqi oppositional forces on the CIA payroll. In Congress, Representative Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the senior Democrat on the House National Security Committee, defended the administration’s policy with the declaration: "We’ll see if [Saddam Hussein] complies. If not, we’ll thump him."

Administration sources also leaked reports to the press of a new CIA plan for subverting the Hussein regime, which called, among other things, for enlisting Kurdish and Shiite agents to destroy utility plants and broadcast stations. "This is a major campaign of sabotage," an unnamed senior administration official told the New York Times.

By last weekend the calls for sabotage and subversion against Baghdad had grown even shriller. On the Sunday news interview programs, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) both declared that the official policy of the government should be the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. Arlen Specter suggested that the US press for Hussein to be tried as a war criminal by the international tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands. He argued that such a move would provide a legal pretext for American efforts to topple his regime.

In a further gesture of belligerence, Lott told Annan he could find no time to meet with the UN official. Annan had previously scheduled meetings with Republican leaders for this week in Washington, aimed at convincing them to approve payment of long-standing American arrears to the UN treasury. In the face of Lott’s provocation, Annan canceled his trip to the capital. "The environment in Washington was less welcome than one might have wished," said Assistant UN Secretary General John Ruggie.

Meanwhile, Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, opened hearings on the subject: "Can Saddam Hussein be overthrown?" Among those slated to testify was Achmed Chalabi, president of the Iraqi National Accord, who received some $15 million from the CIA in the early 1990s.

An undertone of much of the debate within Congress is the possibility of assassinating Hussein. Democratic Senator Charles Robb of Virginia last month proposed that the Clinton administration change an executive order dating from 1976 that outlaws US government efforts to assassinate foreign leaders.

No other government in the world indulges in such open discussions of murder and terrorism against foreign governments and leaders. One need only consider what the US response would be to a public debate within the Iraqi political leadership—or that of any other country—on the merits of subversion and political murder directed against the US.

Indeed, in June of 1993 Clinton ordered the launching of 23 cruise missiles on Baghdad, supposedly in retaliation for an Iraqi plot to assassinate George Bush during the former president’s visit to Kuwait the previous April. The only pieces of evidence ever brought forward for the existence of such a plot were confessions extracted by Kuwaiti torturers. The American missiles hit a residential area and killed eight civilians.

U.S. Navy ships launched 23 Tomahawk missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service yesterday in what President Clinton said was a "firm and commensurate" response to Iraq's plan to assassinate former president George Bush in mid-April.

The attack was meant to strike at the building where Iraqi officials had plotted against Bush, organized other unspecified terrorist actions and directed repressive internal security measures, senior U.S. officials said.

Clinton, speaking in a televised address to the nation at 7:40 last night, said he ordered the attack to send three messages to the Iraqi leadership: "We will combat terrorism. We will deter aggression. We will protect our people."

Clinton said he ordered the attack after receiving "compelling evidence" from U.S. intelligence officials that Bush had been the target of an assassination plot and that the plot was "directed and pursued by the Iraqi Intelligence Service."

"It was an elaborate plan devised by the Iraqi government and directed against a former president of the United States because of actions he took as president," Clinton said. Bush led the coalition that drove Iraq from Kuwait in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "As such, the Iraqi attack against President Bush was an attack against our country and against all Americans," Clinton said.

After two months of investigation and mounting evidence, Clinton became convinced during two "exhaustive and exhausting" meetings last week that Iraq was indeed behind a foiled car-bomb plot to kill Bush during his visit to Kuwait April 14-16, a senior administration official said.

Aides met with Clinton Wednesday in the White House residence to present a summary of the evidence gathered by FBI and intelligence sources, the official said. On Thursday, Attorney General Janet Reno and CIA Director R. James Woolsey presented the president with their formal reports.

Clinton ordered the attack Friday, but the raid was delayed a day so it would not fall on the Muslim sabbath, the official said. "About a dozen" U.S. allies and "friends in the region" were told in advance that the attack was coming; the reaction, according to the official, was mostly favorable. British Prime Minister John Major issued a statement last night supporting Clinton's action.

The missiles struck late at night -- between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Baghdad time -- because Clinton wished to minimize possible deaths of innocent civilians.

But Iraq, which has consistently denied involvement in any assassination plot against Bush, said there were "many civilian casualties" as a result of the Tomahawk attack, the Reuter news service reported. It quoted Iraqi civil defense officials as saying three people were killed and four rescued.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's ruling Revolution Command Council denounced the raid as "cowardly aggression" and said Washington's reason for launching it was "fabricated by the vile Kuwaiti rulers in coordination with agencies in the U.S. administration."

An Iraqi Ministry of Information spokesman said the missiles hit a residential area, where Reuter reported that three houses were destroyed.

From Baghdad, Reuter reported smoke and what appeared to be a huge blaze could be seen rising from the site, about two miles from the center of the city in a residential district. But reporters were not immediately given access to the site.

Clinton was persuaded to act by three kinds of evidence, a senior intelligence official said last night. First, key suspects in the plot confessed to FBI agents in Kuwait. Second, FBI bomb experts painstakingly linked the captured car bomb to previous explosives made in Iraq. Third, unspecified intelligence assessments concluded that Saddam meant seriously the threats he has made against Bush. Other classified intelligence sources supported this analysis, the official said.

The combination made the CIA "highly confident that the Iraqi government, at the highest levels, directed its intelligence service to assassinate former president Bush," said the intelligence official.

Clinton had harsh words for Saddam -- Bush's arch-nemesis during the Persian Gulf War -- in his Oval Office address. After listing the Iraqi leader's offenses against the world and his own people, Clinton said: "This attempt at revenge by a tyrant against the leader of the world coalition that defeated him in war is particularly loathsome and cowardly."

Indeed, the tone of the whole speech was notably forceful and stern, coming from the often avuncular Clinton. He saved his kind words for the men and women involved in the investigation and the military strike: "You have my gratitude, and the gratitude of all Americans," he said.

The action was the second major U.S. military operation conducted during Clinton's presidency, coming just two weeks after U.S. forces participated in a multinational strike against forces in Somalia allied with warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed. Unlike that operation, the raid against Iraq was taken unilaterally, entirely apart from the U.N. sanctions still in place against the Iraqi regime.

"This crime was committed against the United States, and we elected to respond and to exercise our right of self defense" under Article 51 of the U.N. charter, Defense Secretary Les Aspin said. "Tonight's unilateral action in no way diminishes U.S. support for coalition action or for the authority of the United Nations."

Bush -- at his home in Kennebunkport, Maine -- was terse when reached by the Associated Press. "I'm not in the interview business, but thank you very much for calling," he said.

Administration sources said Bush's friend and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft was kept apprised of the investigation, and Clinton called Bush minutes after the attack was launched to give him the news. Secretary of State Warren Christopher flew to Kennebunkport yesterday to brief the former president.

Clinton relied heavily on evidence found by FBI bomb experts linking the Iraqi Intelligence Service to a 175-pound car bomb found April 14 in Kuwait City. According to senior intelligence and law enforcement officials, key pieces of the bomb -- including the remote-control detonator, the plastic explosives, the electronic circuitry and the wiring -- bore an overwhelming resemblance to components of bombs previously recovered from the Iraqis.

The White House press office distributed photographs of circuit boards and detonators taken from earlier Iraqi bombs, alongside photos of the same elements from the bomb meant for Bush. Even to the untrained eye, there were clear similarities.

"Certain aspects of these devices have been found only in devices linked to Iraq," an intelligence official said.

Clinton also had the confessions of the two alleged leaders of the 16 suspects arrested by Kuwait when the plot was uncovered. Both are Iraqi nationals. Ra'ad Asadi and Wali Abdelhadi Ghazali told FBI investigators detailed to Kuwait that they met in Basra, Iraq, on April 12 with "individuals they believed to be associated with the Iraqi Intelligence Service," according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.

They were given a vehicle loaded with hidden explosives. Ghazali told the FBI he was recruited specifically to kill Bush. Asadi also told the FBI he was to guide the car bomb, driven by his partner, to Kuwait University, where Bush was to be honored by the Emir of Kuwait for his leadership in the gulf war.

Administration officials said the suspects told the FBI that the bomb was to be parked near the motorcade route. From a vantage point 300 to 500 yards away, Ghazali would set off the bomb using a remote control. FBI bomb specialists estimated the bomb would have been lethal for nearly a quarter-mile.

FBI agents were told if the remote control device failed, the bomb was to be detonated by a timing device on a street in Kuwait City named for Bush. They were also told that Ghazali had a "bomb belt" he would use if all else failed; he was to wear it, approach Bush and blow them both up.

There have been reports that the suspects held in Kuwait have been tortured by Kuwaiti officials, but a senior law enforcement official said last night that FBI agents "believe they were not." Nevertheless, the official said, confessions are often unreliable, which is why the investigators placed "an especially great emphasis" on the conclusions of the bomb experts.

The CIA recalled that, after the gulf war, Saddam was heard on official Iraq media promising to hunt down and punish Bush, even after he left office. A senior intelligence official said the CIA also had classified evidence proving that the car bomb was meant for Bush, from Saddam.

"We could not and have not let such action against our nation go unanswered," Clinton said in his televised address. "From the first days of our revolution, America's security has depended on the clarity of this message: Don't tread on us."

Clinton had criticized the Iraqi regime on Friday for failing to allow continuous monitoring of its missile test sites by the United Nations. The monitoring was accepted by Baghdad at the end of the 1991 gulf war, as part of a series of agreements meant to strip Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

But U.S. officials did not cite that dispute in explaining the action last night, and U.S. warplanes involved in policing U.N. sanctions against Iraq did not take part.

Congressional leaders from both parties supported Clinton's action. Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) called the president from Charleston, W.Va., to give a thumbs-up. "I think it was a good thing. I support it. If I can help, let me know," Dole told Clinton, according to a CNN interview.

The U.S. attack was initiated at 4:22 p.m. (EDT), when two ships -- the destroyer USS Peterson in the Red Sea and the cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the Persian Gulf -- began firing a total of 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters complex in downtown Baghdad.

The missiles, which each cost an estimated $1.1 million, typically fly 50 to 100 feet above the ground and navigate by radar according to detailed maps stored in onboard computers. Each missile was capable of carrying up to 1,000 pounds of conventional explosives on their flight to Baghdad of up to two hours.

Officials said the number of missiles was set after detailed analysis of what would be needed to ruin the complex. Navy officials programmed most of the missiles to hit specific aim-points at a building near the center, which Aspin called the "hub of . . . operational planning, interrogations, communication, and computer operations" for the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell told reporters at the Pentagon last night that a detailed assessment of the damage was not immediately available. But Powell said he had "preliminary information that a large number of them impacted where they were supposed to."

Officials made clear that no further military action was planned and warned Iraq not to retaliate. Powell said the Navy had moved several ships closer to Iraq so the United States could respond to any Iraqi retaliation.

An aerial picture of the principal targeted building, shown to reporters at the Pentagon last night, showed a large, six-story structure with three wings located off the central corridors. Four satellite dishes sat atop the building's roof.

Nearby were various buildings labeled as administrative, housing and support offices or vehicle storage sheds, and the entire complex -- roughly a football field in length -- was surrounded by a wall. U.S. officials cited the complex's isolation and the fact that the attack was timed to occur during Baghdad's nighttime as factors that would reduce the number of innocent casualties.

Powell and Aspin declined to say how many people were expected to be in the complex but said a portion of it functioned around the clock. The attack was not expected to "take down the entire complex," Powell said, but to ruin Iraq's ability to continue using it.

He noted that the complex was attacked and damaged once before by the United States, during the 1991 Operation Desert Storm bombing campaign aimed at pressuring Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait. But Iraq had since rebuilt the headquarters.

Aspin said the Iraqi Intelligence Service is the country's largest such agency and was responsible for providing security for Saddam's regime, repressing internal opposition, collecting foreign intelligence and conducting terrorist operations abroad, including the planned assassination attempt.

Asked to explain why the United States picked that target and did not go after Saddam himself, Aspin said, "It's very difficult to target a single individual. It's very difficult to capture a single individual. Dropping bombs on the hope that you're going to get a single individual is a very, very demanding task."

Aspin said, "What we're doing is sending a message against the people who were responsible for planning this operation. . . . {If} anybody asks the same people to do it again, they will remember this message."

American, British and French fighter jets have carried out a series of bombing raids over southern Iraq.

The Gulf War Allies targeted missile sites and aircraft command and control bases.

The air raids took place early this evening, (1700 GMT) led by American stealth fighter bombers, based in Saudi Arabia.

Planes were also deployed from a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf, and British tornado bombers and French mirage jets joined the attack.

Initial reports suggest the mission was successful and there were no allied casualties.

US President George Bush ordered the attacks to "teach Saddam Hussein a short, sharp lesson".

The Iraqis have repeatedly breached the "no-fly zone" set up after the Gulf War and made a number of military raids over the border into Kuwait.

The Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, has said the raids into Kuwait will stop.

White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said: "The government of Iraq should understand that continued defiance of UN security council resolutions will not be tolerated."

He said if the cross-border raids continued, there would further attacks without warning.

The UK Prime Minister, John Major, called the action "limited and proportionate".

He said it would mean British planes could once again operate in safety in the no-fly zone.

The BBC's correspondent in Baghdad, Michael Macmillan, says the air raids are likely to strengthen support for Saddam Hussein.

Sanctions imposed since the Gulf War are biting hard and the Iraqi people support his defiance against the West.