As the events of last weekend unfolded, I was taken by the rampant irony.

First of all, this whole Saddam thing.

I thought the whole idea behind this Desert Fox operation was to weaken Saddam so that he could be toppled from power.

Really, getting Saddam out of power is the only way that things in Iraq will ever be close to rational.

So I thought we were going to hammer away for a few weeks and then maybe set up a no-drive zone in the south. That would keep the Republican guard at bay and allow someone to emerge as a new leader.

Then we could prop the new guy up and help him out and perhaps he could gain enough support to take over for Saddam.

Of course, all this was contingent on Saddam's army being decimated and the infrastructure of his country in disarray.

That is something that, generally, you can't accomplish in 70 hours.

So I was a bit surprised that we called off the bombing after 70 hours and declared the operation a success.

Even more surprising to me was that our declaration of success was accompanied by the claim that we had set Saddam's weapons production back a year.

A year.

Logically, that means in a year he'll be right back where he is now. How can this be called a success?

This is a lot different than in 1991 when the United States last attacked Saddam in Desert Storm.

That time, there seemed to be a pretty clear objective. Liberate Kuwait. Lots of people thought we didn't go far enough. That we should have marched right into Baghdad and stuck an American flag in the town square.

But the United Nations said liberate Kuwait, so we liberated Kuwait.

In Desert Fox, the objective wasn't so clear cut. It seems like we were trying to penalize Saddam for not allowing the U.N. inspectors to poke around his palaces.

By the way, does anybody remember who the "Desert Fox" was? He was the infamous Nazi field marshal, Erwin Rommel. Rommel commanded the Afrika Korps until the British forces stopped him in Egypt in 1942. His clever tactics earned him the nickname "The Desert Fox." Question. Why in the world would we name our military operation after a Nazi field marshal? Wonder what Egypt and Israel thought of that? Somebody in the administration is either ignorant or insensitive.

But I digress.

The irony as it relates to Desert Fox is threefold, in my view.

1. When the whole thing started, Saddam was pretty much a world outcast, commanding very little support. Now he has Russia, China, France, Jordan and Syria feeling sorry for him.

2. Since the bombings, Saddam won't let the U.N. inspectors in at all - no way. In fact, now he can use the inspectors as a negotiating tool to have economic sanctions against his country at least partially lifted. My guess would be that he will be successful, given the improved level of support he enjoys among U.N. member nations.

3. Saddam can now paint himself as a hero among his people, having once again survived an attack by the "Great Satan."

Basically, I think Saddam probably came out of these bombings in pretty good shape.

And here's something to consider.

President Bill Clinton told reporters that he made the decision to bomb Iraq after he returned from Israel to read the British inspector's report and after consulting with congressional leaders.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he knew about the bombings before they happened. And Porter Goss, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he learned about the attack when he saw it on television.

Sounds like the president told two fibs in one sentence.

Other ironies were evident in the impeachment process last weekend.

I watched in awe as the president and selected Democratic congressmen (not all of them, by the way) held what appeared to be an impeachment victory party on the White House lawn.

This occurred just minutes after Clinton became the first elected president in the history of the United States to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

It was bizarre.

They were all smiling and shaking hands and thanking each other for their support.

Even more bizarre and ironic was the fact that just hours before, these same Democrat congressmen walked up to the microphone in the well of the House and chastised the president.

They used words like deplorable, despicable, denigrates, defiles, demeans and disgraces to describe Clinton's actions.

They were quick to note, of course, that even though it was very bad, his conduct did not "rise" to the level of impeachment. (Shouldn't that be "sink" to the level of impeachment?)

And when the president asked for an end to the politics of personal destruction, was he talking about Larry Flynt, James Carville and Sydney Blumenthal or just the Republicans?

I also want to know what happened to the famine and pestilence.

Remember the ululant cacophony of the president's supporters? If the House passed articles of impeachment, woe of biblical proportions would reign in the land.

The stock market would crash. There would be world economic turmoil. Civilization as we know it would grind to a standstill amid chaos.

Of course, none of that happened. Just as none of it will happen if there is a trial in the Senate.

Just as none of it will happen in the unlikely event that the president is removed from office.

But it sure sounds good, doesn't it?

And finally, I am told by the networks and CNN that the American people likely will never elect another Republican because of the unfairness of the impeachment process.

The polls show an all-time low approval rating for the Grand Old Party.

So the Republicans' diligence in the impeachment process can only mean one of two things:

1. They are willing to risk everything to stand on principle.

2. They are too stupid to watch CNN. [[In-content Ad]]