On this day in 1998, Bill Clinton, on the eve of his impeachment, began 4 days of bombing on Iraq, based on 'threats' of Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs, killing 1,400 Iraqis, including 100 civilians & setting stage for US invasion in 2003 by weakening Iraq’s defenses. 
Despite the attack supposedly being about WMDs, it’s clear from the targets the actual goal was to weaken the Iraqi state. The attack, involving 1000 cruise missiles & bombs, targeted police stations, gov buildings, grain storage warehouses, military facilities & an oil refinery.
One of the air strikes blew out all the windows in the largest maternity hospital in Baghdad, forcing doctors and nurses to evacuate all of the patients in the middle of the attack. Some women spontaneously went into labor, and a few involuntarily aborted their pregnancies.
An unknown number of private homes were also bombed, none of the targeted sites were known WMD production facilities.
The US government had even planted CIA agents into the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq as part of the CIA’s ‘Shake the Tree’ operation, which successfully spied on Iraqi leadership. theguardian.com/world/1999/mar…
The US lied, claiming no civilians were killed. However, an Iraqi doctor living in Britain described his mother’s home being bombed by the US strikes, killing 5 of his family members.
Dr. Mohammed Al-Obaidi, wrote, “a cruise missile hit my parents’ house in the suburb of Baghdad, where my mother, my sister-in-law, and her three children were all killed.”
According to Obaidi, 22 others were killed in the area, 37 more were wounded. Obaidi’s brother went to the site the next day and said the missile had created a hole 20 feet deep in the ground.
“Rescue workers were unable to collect the remains of innocent people who were killed,” Obaidi says. “Even after the funeral, they found pieces of bodies, and a hand here and a thumb there.”
During the strikes, the U.S. military dropped atrocity leaflets on Iraqis, depicting the 'Highway of Death', (where the U.S. military massacred retreating Iraqi troops in 1991). The message of the leaflets is don't resist U.S. forces, or you'll be annihilated.
