The Washington Post - Washington, D.C.
Jim Hoagland Jan 18, 1998

If Iraq's defiance of U.N. arms inspections forces President Clinton to order U.S. military strikes, America's top soldier will not waste time trying to bomb Saddam Hussein into resuming inspections or making other political gestures. Gen. Henry H. Shelton will instead probably go after the chemical, biological or nuclear facilities that Iraq has sought to conceal.

Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, outlined that sensible but historic proposition during a Dec. 19 meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Post. I had asked Shelton if he really thought air strikes could inflict enough pain to make the Iraqi dictator change goals and accept a publicly humiliating retreat on inspections.

The Shelton approach represents not just a shift from Vietnam-era thinking that the military long ago absorbed. It also reflects a still coalescing change in the way the United States will now respond to the spread to hostile or irresponsible nations of chemical, biological and nuclear arms -- weapons of mass destruction, or WMD in the jargon of doomsday thinkers.