The air assault battered Iraq, but it hasn't wiped out the threat posed by Saddam's secret lethal arsenal

THE START OF IT WAS CHILLINGLY FAMILIAR the wail of sirens, the staccato blasts of antiaircraft fire, the tracers lighting up the night sky over Baghdad. Then came the crash of missiles in the distance, sending up an orange glow along the horizon. On just the first night of Operation Desert Fox, U.S. ships and bombers pounded Iraq with 280 American cruise missiles--almost as many as hit the country during the entire Gulf War in 1991. Night after night, waves of warplanes, including B-52s, F-14s, F-18s and British Tornadoes, joined in the attack. Even the B-1 bomber, a cold war relic that had never seen combat despite its $280 million-per-plane price tag, got in on the action. The first night of bombs, Pentagon officials said, disarmed Iraq's air-defense network, flattened its intelligence headquarters and destroyed barracks housing Saddam Hussein's special security forces. General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed reporters photos of several smashed targets and proclaimed success. "There's nothing left but rubble," he said.

By last Saturday, when the President announced an end to the bombing, it was clear that Iraq was heavily damaged, and there were other casualties, including the stature of the United Nations Security Council and the U.S.'s reputation in the eyes of some nations. It wasn't just Republicans who suggested that Clinton had ordered the assault in a Wag the Dog effort to avert impeachment. That theory--though erroneous--echoed in Britain's Parliament, in French editorials and throughout the Arab world. "For Monica's sake, Iraqi children are dying" read a sign waved during a demonstration at a Cairo mosque. From Russia and China came deep grumblings that the U.S. had overstepped itself. Said Boris Yeltsin: "The U.S. and Great Britain have crudely violated the U.N. charter and generally accepted principles of international law and the norms and rules of responsible behavior of states."

ANYONE WHO WANTED TO PREDICT THE TIMING OF the air strikes merely had to consult Richard Butler's calendar. The head of the U.N.'s Iraq inspection team, known as UNSCOM, had been telling diplomats for weeks that he intended to give the Security Council a crucial report on Iraqi compliance by Dec. 15. Delivered right on schedule, it showed that the Iraqis had been up to their usual tricks: concealing equipment that could be used to make bioweapons, blocking interviews with workers at suspicious sites, lying about sealed documents detailing the military's past uses of chemical agents.

The President needed no prodding for war. a month earlier, Clinton had ordered a meticulously planned assault and called it off only at the last minute, when Saddam promised full cooperation with UNSCOM . At the time, Clinton declared that war would come without warning if Saddam misbehaved again. Months of Iraqi duplicity had convinced the White House that UNSCOM wouldn't get compliance. So when he got advance word on the contents of Butler's report on Sunday, Dec. 13, the President, in Jerusalem at the beginning of his Middle East trip, had no good choice but to act. He gave the Pentagon 72 hours to prepare an attack. Says a senior White House official: "The consequences, the damage, the significance of making an alternative decision are just unimaginable."

One thing could be said for the timing: just as Washington had hoped, the offensive stunned the Iraqis. Almost none of their antiaircraft radar was turned on. Saddam probably had no notion that his meddling with the inspectors would so quickly invite a military assault. Though the U.S. forces massed in the Gulf last week--24,100 troops, 201 aircraft and 22 ships--were only a fraction of the arsenal used in the Gulf War, extensive intelligence on Iraq's warmaking machinery and smarter weapons made officials predict that each Desert Fox sortie would be more punishing than those of 1991.