And even if they did rise up any revolt would be crushed in blood.It is reasonable for the US and Britain to ask for the final destruction of Iraqi non-conventional weapons. Although only 7 per cent of the munitions dropped during the Gulf War were “smart”, they made up 84 per cent of the cost At times these weapons were very accurate. They hit bridges, ministries and telecommunications towers in the heart of Baghdad.But the Iraqi government went on functioning. Even the uprising in the south of Iraq never spread to Baghdad, which is the key to political power in Iraq (eight million Iraqis out of a total population of 20 million live in the metropolitan area of the capital) There is little chance of this recurring. Ordinary Iraqis are deeply cynical about the motives of the US and Britain.

This has done no end of good to the budgets of airforces around the world. Airforces need to argue for perfect accuracy to justify the expense of the new weapons. Arthur “Bomber” Harris, later head of bomber command, served his apprenticeship dropping bombs on Kurdish villages.One of the myths of the Gulf War is that “smart” weapons have revolutionised warfare. It may also have dissipated a healthy scepticism in the US about the use of airpower which followed its failure in Vietnam. General Norman Schwartzkopf, the commander of Desert Storm, says: “We run the risk of doing the same thing we did to North Vietnam.” He explained that in Vietnam the airforce, frustrated at its failure to achieve its political or military goals, continually escalated its air attacks.Air power has a sorry history in the Middle East as a means of political coercion. The CIA was forced to evacuate its vast operation from Kurdistan.A further problem for President Clinton is that that the Gulf War created exaggerated expectations. Ironically, it was pioneered in Iraq where Winston Churchill as Colonial Secretary in 1922 withdrew most of the British army on the grounds that it could be held by the RAF.

In 1995 it became involved through its operatives in Kurdistan – though not fully backed by Washington – in a plan to build up an opposition army in the Kurdish provinces. It hoped that this would ignite revolts in the Iraqi army.It never happened. In 1996 a military conspiracy in Baghdad was bloodily crushed. This appears to have given Saddam Hussein the confidence to capture the Kurdish capital Arbil with his tanks. Over 100 members of the Iraqi opposition were captured and killed. These historical points are important today because the ease with which Kuwait was reconquered in 1991 has gives the impression that any new invasion would succeed with equal ease.The option of externally directed internal subversion is equally flawed. The CIA made repeated efforts between 1991 and 1996 to subvert the regime in Baghdad, based first in Iraqi Kurdistan and then in Jordan.

But the Iraqis had a large army with long experience in the eight-year- long war with Iran. Allied casualties were so low because at the last minute the Iraqi leader ordered his men to withdraw from Kuwait.An Iraqi brigadier, now in exile in London, told The Independent that his unit received “three separate messages – from the army, party and military intelligence – telling us to withdraw. This was to show us that the orders were real and not a fake sent by the Allies.” He says that if the Iraqi army had not pulled out of their prepared positions, protected by vast minefields in Kuwait, it could have inflicted heavy casualties on the Allies.Saddam Hussein evidently calculated that if he withdrew voluntarily from Kuwait – and Allied casualties were low – that he would not be pursued to Baghdad He may even have been covertly told so by Washington. They put forward the alternatives of ground attack or external subversion.

Supporters of these neo-colonial ventures show a dangerous ignorance of what really happened in the Gulf War as well as the political history of Iraq over the last seven years.The Gulf War was much less of an all-out military conflict than appeared at the time Given the disparity of forces the Allies were bound to win. Saddam Hussein’s grip on his own country is probably stronger than at any time since the invasion of Kuwait. Allied planes still over-fly Iraqi Kurdistan, but on the ground the Iraqi leader is now largely in control.There is a growing acceptance on the far right in the United States that air power alone will not damage Saddam Hussein. No sovereign state, whether it is run by Saddam Hussein or Nelson Mandela, is going to agree, if it can possibly help it, to foreign observers – often former intelligence officers – having free run of its military, intelligence and government offices. Iraq only agreed to this in 1991 under the threat of invasion by an army of half a million men.This army no longer exists The Gulf War alliance has fragmented. Iraq is not going to cooperate with weapons inspectors for any length of time if there is no real prospect of sanctions being lifted. The only way to resolve the crisis in the long term is to bring to an end the immediate consequences of the Gulf War.