Operation DESERT FOX

Operation DESERT FOX was a four-day U.S. air campaign against Iraq in 1998, beginning on December 16, ordered by President Bill Clinton. It was intended to punish Saddam Hussein for noncooperation with the United Nations Special Commission search for weapons of mass destruction. A previous strike, with bombers in the air, had been called off on November 14 when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors return, but he later refused.

From a pure military standpoint, it was quite efficient. It began with a large strike by BGM-109 Tomahawk ship-launched and AGM-86 ALCM air-launched cruise missiles, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps aircraft flying from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65), ; U.S. Air Force and Royal Air Force aircraft operating from land bases. It involved the first combat use of B-1 Lancer heavy bombers. By the second day, 27 surface-to-air missile sites, 18 command and control facilities, 19 sites of the security organization of Saddam Hussein, 11 WMD industrial and production facilities, eight Republican Guard facilities, and five airfields had been hit.

The operation hit the designated targets but may have had negative political effects. An editorial in the Boston Globe said Strategically, the military campaign was a blunder and sowed the seeds of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Unintentionally, the 1998 attack splintered the coalition that President George H. W. Bush painstakingly assembled in 1990 during the lead-up to the 1991 Gulf War. Neither Clinton nor his successor President George W. Bush was able to reunite this large group of nations dedicated to stopping Hussein from getting weapons of mass destruction...Another unintended consequence was that the United States lost practically all credible intelligence about Iraqi WMD-related activities. UN inspectors were shut out of Iraq until late 2002, when George W. Bush formed a much weaker coalition.

While the operation's name in the "DESERT" series seemed straightforward, there was slight embarrassment when it was pointed out that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, a WWII German commander, was known as the Desert Fox.