I'm still reading this link.
WOW!
http://themilitant.com/1996/6033/6033_2.html
(snip)
"It is against Iraqi tanks and troops directly threatening the Kurds that US air power should be deployed," stated a September 10 editorial in the London Financial Times. "Targets in the south were chosen because that involved little or no risk to US pilots," the British paper noted. The U.S. missile strikes "were a show of weakness."
The September 8 Washington Post article reported that by August 31, top Pentagon officials "quickly convinced themselves that attacking Saddam's troops in the north carried too many risks." For one thing, "The nearest possible staging area for a military operation was Turkey, whose new Islamic-led coalition government would not welcome a U.S. operation from its soil." And "the Kurdish political scene had become hopelessly muddled by the new alignments with Iraq and Iran."
Another limitation was that "Clinton found himself without allies, with the lone exception of Britain," Wall Street Journal columnist George Melloan remarked. "So much for that new world order."
"What did the missiles accomplish? Calamity for U.S. interests," wrote conservative columnist Robert Novak. "Desert Storm's Arab-European coalition is shattered. Saddam is reestablished in northern Iraq. The United States is exposed as a paper tiger for timidly undertaking an operation it should have avoided."