This time next week, if not sooner say the pundits, British and American supersonic whizz-bangs will be exploding in Iraq in round four or five of the war against Saddam Hussein.

Round one was Desert Shield, the tourniquet of economic sanctions applied for six months in 1990 while Allied forces gathered in Saudi Arabia. That was followed by Desert Storm which lasted six weeks. Then John Major's safe havens for Kurds were set up. Early last year or the year before, the Americans loosed off 20 or 30 sea-borne cruise missiles to remind Saddam to assist the UN weapons inspectors.

None of these actions led to World War III. There's no reason to suppose that another strike will do other than lead to a brief outbreak of diplomatic squabbling, probably by the French and the Russians simply because they are jealous/suspicious of the Americans.

France has never really forgiven the US for doing what its armed forces could not do - defeat the Nazis in World War II. Russia, its borders no longer swaddled by the packing of Warsaw Pact countries, feels vulnerable. The sight of the US freewheeling through the world of global politics reminds the men in the Kremlin of the time when the USSR had such a role.

The uneasy state of affairs which has prevailed between Iraq and the West since Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait seven years ago is wholly due to world opinion.

World opinion - the reality of television - gagged on the sight of the smouldering remains of fleeing Iraqis, caught on the road out of Kuwait by Allied helicopter gun-ships and fighter-bombers. It was a turkey shoot.

While The Sunday Times urged the Allies on to Baghdad to finish the job once and for all, other opinion-formers and influencers reminded President George Bush that the Allies' United Nations' mandates did not allow for invasion. With elections coming up in both the US and Britain as well, George Bush and John Major quickly curbed further military action.

They risked their international credibility to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait; their reluctance to be accused of warmongering was, in the circumstances, understandable. Pity the poor Kurds, though, who rose up against Saddam in the expectation of the Stars and Stripes flying from the flagpoles of Baghdad.

Nevertheless the job was half-done. Saddam was left free to continue his eccentric governance - restoring the glory of ancient Babylon while Iraqi children went hungry.

The job might not have got that far if Bush and Major had heeded the doom-laden warnings of peace-mongers, especially those who saw the land battle against the Iraqis as a replay of those Western Front bloodbaths of World War I. In fact Gulf War Syndrome afflicted more Allied soldiers than the bullets and bombs of the world's fourth-largest army.

It will be said, of course, that President Clinton has resorted to headline-distracting air-strikes to deflect attention from accusations of sexual shenanigans in the White House.

The truth is Saddam had been giving the weapons inspectors grief long before Monica Lewinsky appeared on the scene. The President, enjoying unprecedented levels of public support from Americans sick of Political Correctness, has more to lose than gain if future air-strikes go wrong.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.