I admit I'm surprised to hear you identify with the media given how many times you've described them as unfairly biased. As to Iraq firing on Allied aircraft, IIRC news coverage at the time "firing" was rather broadly (and badly) defined to include missle locks (and attempted locks). That specious sense of "firing" is not the one I meant, obviously, and, again, I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I've never heard of any Iraqi missiles launched against Allied fighters.

"Baghdad eventually halted firing on patrolling Allied aircraft after August 1993.

"In the aftermath of Operation Desert Fox during December 1998, Iraq announced it would no longer respect the no-fly zones and resumed its efforts in shooting down Allied aircraft. Saddam Hussein offered a $14,000 reward to anyone who could accomplish this task, but no manned aircraft were ever shot down by Iraq". They stopped "firing" in any sense in '93, probably because they never hit anything, and lost a lot of SAM emplacements and fighters trying. "In the aftermath of Operation Desert Fox during December 1998, Iraq announced it would no longer respect the no-fly zones and resumed its efforts in shooting down Allied aircraft. Saddam Hussein offered a $14,000 reward to anyone who could accomplish this task, but no manned aircraft were ever shot down by Iraq". Note the language; not that Iraq resumed "launching missiles" but "efforts in shooting down Allied aircraft". Operation Desert Fox was, of course, the cruise missile attacks Clinton authorized in response to Iraqis trying to lock on to US aircraft. The same operation Congressional Republicans unanimously condemned as a pointless exercise against a "toothless" threat. The same Congressional Republicans who demanded we invade Iraq and remove that "toothless" threat five years later. Again, that changed that made a "toothless" threat into a serious and imminent one in the interim, apart from the White House letterhead?