CRUISE DIPLOMACY

The American missile raid on Baghdad last month was different from the raids of last January, which were a response to Iraqi challenges to the Gulf War victors. The new raid had no connection with the terms imposed on Iraq after the war, or with the UN resolutions regarding Iraq, or with the UN at all. It was a unilateral US act of retaliation for Iraq's alleged instigation of a plot to assassinate ex- President Bush in Kuwait in April.