Yes, the timing was amazingly coincidental, but no, I don't think the president bombed Iraq in an attempt to stop the impeachment proceedings.

In the first place, there was no reason for him to think that a delay would prevent the inevitable. The only way to change the outcome of the House impeachment vote would have been to delay the vote until the new Congress convenes in January, and President Clinton knew that wasn't going to happen.

In the second place, Clinton doesn't control his nemesis, Saddam Hussein. Even the most rabid conspiratorialist isn't going to suggest that Saddam was in league with Clinton and purposely chose impeachment eve to dig in his heels on inspections yet again.

I suppose there are some who believe the president's charisma and power of persuasion worked on the United Nations inspectors, and they set up the Iraqui leader by pretending to have been denied access to inspection sites in an effort to provoke an incident and help Clinton out of his domestic crisis. I haven't checked Art Bell's web site yet to see whether that theory has been put forth.

But for those with even a minimal amount of skepticism, that scenario is equally farfetched.

More likely, Saddam has been trying for some time to provoke a bombing, and he finally succeeded. The timing was dictated by the dictator.

Look at it from his perspective. He wants to be rid of these inspectors for good. He knows that the U.S. no longer has the overwhelming military forces with which to attack him directly as we did during Desert Storm. Thanks to the so-called "peace dividends," we don't even have enough equipment left to carry that many troops into battle, even if we had a massive recruiting campaign.

Saddam has tried several times to goad a bombing attack so that he could play the victim on the world stage, and to give him an excuse to ban the inspectors forever.

In previous encounters, Clinton has backed down. This time, with his domestic troubles increasing and with the growing perception that he was simply too weak to act, the president would be forced to send the bombs. Saddam knew this, and the choice of timing was all his.

Crazy? Sure. But he played Clinton like a well-worn sitar.

Commentators universally assume that Iraq will no longer play along with the inspection game, in which case the natural next question is: What do we do now?

Fling some more missiles? They cost a million bucks apiece, and once we hit all the targets we think we know about, there's nothing left to hit unless we start shooting at the chemical and biological weapons this madman is developing in residential areas. That, of course, would result in the unleashing of these chemicals and biological agents upon the civilian population of Iraq.

World opinion would turn against us big time.

Our only recourse would be a ground attack and, as noted, our president has dismantled our ability to mount such a war... at least he has rendered us incapable of doing so with the same degree of success we enjoyed last time. There would be more casualties, the campaign would last much longer, and the cost would be all ours. The coalition of political and financial support among Arab nations, so carefully built by President Bush, has been allowed to disintegrate under President Clinton.

Clinton's final two years would be consumed with this war, and there's no guarantee we would win.

But unless we go ahead and endure such a war, Saddam has won. He will continue to develop his weapons, and we will have to face him sooner or later. Let's just hope that by then we have a president who will have rebuilt our ability to stop him.

The American people cannot see what is happening, if you believe the polls. Seventy percent still respond to poll questions by saying they think the president is doing a good job.

I pray they never find out just how wrong they are.

By the way, at this writing, with the ink still drying on articles of impeachment, the stock market is up. Apparently, investors are not worried at the prospect of losing this president.