Inside the Ring

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THE VERDICT

A month has passed since Operation Desert Fox, the 70-hour U.S. and British bombing of Iraq. It was the largest raid against Saddam Hussein since the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

What prompted the raid was Iraq's refusal to allow U.N. inspectors to go about their job of removing weapons of mass destruction from the country.

When the rubble stopped bouncing, the Pentagon declared the raid a "74 percent" success in "degrading" Saddam Hussein's far-flung terror weapons industry.

But Desert Fox produced other results, said Tony Cordesman, a top military expert.

"We demonstrated we could strike the regime and not the people and do so with great success," said the senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and …