After Iraq refused to allow United Nations on-site weapons inspections in December 1998, prompting the United States to launch intensive air strikes against Iraq, Leon S. Fuerth, Mr. Gore's national security adviser, argued for a number of punitive actions against Mr. Hussein, including the destruction of some of his key political and military installations.
But while it is possible to monitor a country's known enrichment sites, weapons labs are hard to find, and the knowledge of how to build a bomb impossible to erase.
The full panoply of Israeli air power has been used in a steadily escalating series of attacks against rocket launch sites, weapons stores, and the command elements of Hamas and other groups.
Israeli warplanes fired missiles at launch sites, weapons stockpiles and suspected militants in Gaza, including three men identified by Israeli authorities as Islamic Jihad members involved in manufacturing rockets.
The ominous mood is deepened by the fact that St Kilda now serves as a radar tracking site for weapons testing.
A team from the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a special unit that tests suspected sites for weapons of mass destruction, is scheduled to visit the site on Tuesday.
But he added that increasing demands on American troops have meant that the military has had to reserve the heaviest security for munitions sites containing weapons like rocket-propelled grenades that could be used most readily against allied forces; that left other sites, with larger weapons like bombs and missiles, with less security or Iraqi guards who may be prone to bribes.
The storage sites where weapons are waiting for destruction, are subject to control.
The visit is not related to Security Council demands for inspections of suspected sites of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
As the fighting continued, warplanes struck dozens of what the Israeli military said were rocket-launching sites and weapons caches whose locations might have been pinpointed by informers.
