Just when President Clinton was about to endure the humiliation of impeachment he donned his Commander-in-Chief's cap and sent his forces into battle to overturn a cruel dictator.
As Americans are getting ready for the Christmas festivities, they are also having to ask themselves a question they would rather not face. Can they entrust their troops to a President who lied to them for eight months over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
A poll taken after the cruise missiles were launched on Baghdad shows him getting the benefit of the doubt. The Gallup poll for CNN/USA Today shows 62 per cent believe he acted in the best interests of the country while 30 per cent said his motive was in part to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal.
Some will be surprised the level of scepticism is not higher when one recalls we have been here before. Last August the missiles were launched on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and on a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan just after Mr Clinton was forced to admit he misled the country over his affair.
The eerie similarity with the Wag the Dog film, where an American president fakes a war with Albania to distract attention from a sex scandal, resonated around the world - to the intense annoyance of the White House.
This time the sceptics and/or cynics see a scenario where this House of Representatives, now certain to vote for impeachment, is forced to postpone the debate indefinitely while American lives are at stake. After Christmas and the New Year, this Congress expires on January 5th and the one elected last November, with more Democratic seats, would have to start the impeachment process all over again.
In sports parlance, the President would be "running out the clock" or playing for time. The Republicans, poised for impeachment of a President most of them detest, were naturally frustrated at how Operation Desert Fox - announced for some reason by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair - put the debate on hold. Breaking with a tradition that domestic politics stops at the water's edge, the most senior Republican, Senate majority leader Trent Lott, publicly questioned the President's action.
Senator Lott is actually a "hawk" on Iraq and wants stronger action to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but said in this case "Both the timing and the policy are subject to question."
This caused dismay in the White House and shock among the Washington establishment accustomed to the tradition that once US forces are ordered into action, all must rally to the President.
Some Republicans were more outspoken, such as Gerald Solomon, the Chairman of the powerful Rules Committee, who said "Never underestimate a desperate President."
Mr Laurence Eagleburger, a former Secretary of State to President Carter, said that while Saddam Hussein deserved such treatment, the timing "smells to high heaven". But Mr Carter, who has no great love for Mr Clinton, defended his action.
The President yesterday dismissed suggestions he was seeking to distract from his own serious problem and pointed to the unanimous support from his own national security team, which includes a highly respected former Republican senator, William Cohen, who is now Secretary of Defence. "I am prepared to place 30 years of public service on the line to say the only factor that was important in this decision is what is in the American people's best interests," Mr Cohen insisted.
So the question of the President's real motivation will continue to be argued. On the face of it, the strikes were only a matter of time, since Mr Clinton halted them with 15 minutes to spare last November and recent evidence has emerged that the UN weapons inspectors were not getting the promised co-operation.
But now that the inspectors are unlikely to be allowed back to Iraq, the US seems obliged to keep large forces on standby at vast expense to take action whenever Saddam Hussein is suspected of producing more weapons of mass destruction.
But strikes or no strikes, Mr Clinton faces the prospect of being the first president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson in 1868. The White House strategy of mustering enough moderate Republicans to support censure instead of impeachment collapsed this week as the hardline Mr Tom DeLay, the chief whip, ensured censure would not be available as an option.
The "moderates" quickly jumped off the fence and announced they would vote to impeach on the perjury charges.
So certain did impeachment appear that strategists on both sides have already moved on to the next stage, which would be the trial of the President in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed to secure his dismissal from office. This was an amazing turnaround from the euphoria created by the poor showing of the Republicans in the mid-term elections which were supposed to hammer the Democrats over the Monica Lewinsky affair.
How did this come about? There are various answers. Overconfidence by the White House; Republican anger over the continued refusal by the President's lawyers to admit he lied; and the impact of the re-telling to the Judiciary Committee of the President's evasions and half-truths.
The poll-driven White House realised too late that the conservative, bible-belt Republicans who dominated the committee were ready to ignore the high Clinton ratings in the polls.
Instead they insisted the President be held to account for what they saw as perjury before Mr Starr's grand jury as well as in the Paula Jones civil case.
The postponement of the impeachment vote in the House has infuriated Republicans even while they voted yesterday to support the US forces engaged in the strikes but without mentioning the President. Impeachment is now even more likely by the end of this week.
Removal of the President is another matter. The hardline Republicans who want to pin the scarlet letter of impeachment on Mr Clinton realise there is unlikely to be a two-thirds majority to convict him in the Senate and that he will limp along to the end of his presidency.