Just under a quarter of a century ago, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein announced that he would cease cooperating with international arms inspectors. Throughout the 1980s, the International Atomic Energy Agency had given Iraq clean bills of health on its nuclear program. After Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein’s sons-in-law defected to Jordan with box loads of documents proving that Saddam had fooled inspectors, lied to the international community, and continued a covert nuclear program all along. It was this decadelong deception of the IAEA that led to the Additional Protocol to tighten the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s loopholes.
Former President Bill Clinton responded to Saddam’s defiance by launching “Operation Desert Fox,” a four-day bombing campaign to compel Iraq to allow inspectors to resume their jobs. When a national security adviser had asked Joe Biden, then the ranking Democratic on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, what the political storm to such unilateral action might be, Biden advised Clinton to “put on his raincoat and launch away.” The campaign worked, and Saddam allowed inspectors to return.
