For educational purposes
On August 3rd 1990, Iraq, under its ferocious dictator Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait, its oil-rich neighbour.
Not long out of a war with Iran, Iraq badly under-estimated the reaction of the watching world to its unprovoked attack; in particular, they believed that the US would not dare to become involved.
A coalition against Iraq was formed and it struck back in January 1991. Iraq's air defence system and the country's infra-structure were taken apart by air attacks that utilised the very latest warfare technology - and it was technology as much as anything else that brought Iraq's armed forces to its knees.
Saddam had promised the 'mother of all battles' - words that came to haunt him and his army as they were caught in the open on the bloody road to Basra.
On August 3rd 1990, Iraq, under its ferocious dictator Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait, its oil-rich neighbour.
Not long out of a war with Iran, Iraq badly under-estimated the reaction of the watching world to its unprovoked attack; in particular, they believed that the US would not dare to become involved.
A coalition against Iraq was formed and it struck back in January 1991. Iraq's air defence system and the country's infra-structure were taken apart by air attacks that utilised the very latest warfare technology - and it was technology as much as anything else that brought Iraq's armed forces to its knees.
Saddam had promised the 'mother of all battles' - words that came to haunt him and his army as they were caught in the open on the bloody road to Basra.
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LearningTranscript
00:00At 8 a.m. on the 28th of February 1991, silence descended over the battlefields of Kuwait
00:10and southern Iraq, after the coalition halted its stunningly successful 100-hour ground
00:15war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, initiated almost seven months previously.
00:23Against the backdrop of arid desert and burning oil wells, the coalition had used its superior
00:28weapons and highly trained combat personnel to wreak havoc on what was then the fourth
00:34largest army in the world.
00:38The potent images of stealth fighters and pinpoint-accurate laser-guided missiles became
00:43the devastating symbols of the futility of resisting the coalition's awesome combat power.
01:13The
01:39event that triggered the hostilities of January and February 1991 occurred back on the 2nd
01:45of August 1990, when Kuwait's citizens awoke to the sounds of Iraqi T-72 tanks advancing
01:52down the streets of Kuwait City.
01:55Iraq, a state led by the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, head of the Ba'ath Party, had committed
02:02an act of unprovoked aggression that shocked the world.
02:09Within a few hours that morning, Iraqi forces had occupied all of Kuwait, the tiny emirate
02:14of the Al-Sabah dynasty.
02:18Saddam Hussein said, Kuwait has been returned to the fold of her motherland, Iraq.
02:27By conquering Kuwait, Saddam sent a powerful message to discontented Arabs to overthrow
02:32the complacent pro-Western shakedoms that had been created by the imperialist whims
02:38that dominated Arabia's painful colonial past.
02:42The justification for invading Kuwait is, of course, that Kuwait was an artificial state
02:48created by Western imperialism, of course British imperialism, and that historically
02:53it had been part of the Ottoman province, which then became Iraq.
03:00Saddam had many good reasons for invading Kuwait, reasons which he gave to his brother
03:05Arabs.
03:06These were the noble, all-embracing reasons, the liberation from the West.
03:12What Saddam didn't mention, that of course the Wall Street Journal and the Financial
03:15Times are talking about at considerable length, was the fact that Iraq was $90 billion in
03:20debt after its war with Iran.
03:24Saddam had bankrupted Iraq fighting the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
03:30In early 1990s, Saddam was trying to find ways of easing the financial burden on his
03:35country.
03:36He looked to Kuwait for a moratorium on the debts that they owed from the war.
03:42He looked to use his oil revenues to decrease his debt.
03:47The problem there was that Kuwait allegedly, according to Saddam, was actually overproducing
03:53their oil, exceeding the OPEC oil quotas, and therefore flooding the oil market, lowering
04:00the global price of oil, and Saddam's economists reckon that every dollar off the price of
04:06oil reduced Iraq's export revenue by a billion dollars a year.
04:12So from a money point of view, Iraq wants to take Kuwait in order to be able to control
04:21Kuwait's oil production, to keep production levels lower, thus to keep the price of oil
04:27higher, and the higher the price of oil, the more money Saddam Hussein has coming in.
04:37During an emergency session, the United Nations Security Council's Resolution 660 promptly
04:42condemned the invasion and demanded an immediate Iraqi withdrawal.
04:48British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President George Bush then called for the
04:53establishment of an international military coalition to compel Saddam's withdrawal,
04:58while the UN instituted economic sanctions against Iraq.
05:03In response, Saddam annexed Kuwait, and appeared to concentrate his forces on Kuwait's border
05:09with Saudi Arabia.
05:11Saddam seems to have expected that the outside world would be unhappy with the invasion,
05:18but that the outside world would not react militarily to the invasion.
05:23He sees the United States hampered by the failings of Vietnam, and therefore unlikely
05:28to resort to force, and as a society, unwilling to take the risks of a resort to force.
05:35Western leaders concluded that Saddam intended to invade Saudi Arabia, and thus control its
05:40vast oil reserves.
05:42There was absolutely nothing between Saddam's very formidable divisions and the Saudi oil
05:49fields.
05:50It was simply a military promenade.
05:52It would be a matter of simply driving south a couple of hundred kilometers.
05:55All he needed to do was to maintain the vehicles, keep up the fuel, and he could get there.
06:00There was precious little that Saudi Arabian forces could actually do to stop him getting
06:05to the oil fields.
06:07If successful, this aggression would enable Saddam to hold the Western world to ransom
06:12by manipulating the price of oil.
06:16This fear of economic damage to America proved pivotal in persuading President Bush to intervene
06:22militarily in this Middle Eastern crisis, even though previous regional problems had
06:27not prompted such an American response.
06:33Bush reacted swiftly to this apparent threat by initiating Operation Desert Shield on the
06:398th of August, with the dispatch of the 82nd U.S. Airborne Division to northern Saudi Arabia
06:44to deter future Iraqi aggression.
06:48That same day, Britain and France announced their intention to send contingents to augment
06:53America's Desert Shield forces.
06:55There's a feeling of excitement buzzing around, which I'm sure you can feel.
06:59The boys in the sheds woke up this morning with a purpose, going to get the kit unloaded,
07:03and really looking forward to getting out into the desert and working alongside the
07:06American Marines.
07:07It's very exciting.
07:09In turn, Saddam sought to internationalize the conflict into a pan-Arab holy war.
07:15He called on the United Arab World to expel the infidel Western forces in the region.
07:20He linked any Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait to the departure of Israeli forces from occupied
07:25Palestinian territory, and he threatened to unleash chemical weapons against Israel if
07:31the coalition attacked Iraq.
07:39During September, the military coalition continued to assemble in northern Saudi Arabia.
07:44The force came under the authority of the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, then led
07:49by the mercurial commander, General Stormy Norman Schwarzkopf.
07:54There are a number of people that really disliked Schwarzkopf.
08:00His potential for arrogance, for flippancy, his very dry sense of humor, he often came
08:06across as brusque.
08:07There were others that really got on well with him because he spoke his mind.
08:11He was a very intelligent, professional military man.
08:17During September, it still seemed that sanctions and diplomacy might peacefully resolve the
08:22crisis.
08:23However, in late October, an increasingly impatient Bush resolved to use military force
08:29to liberate Kuwait.
08:32But Bush insisted that the U.S. forces deployed in the Gulf be doubled before the coalition
08:36commenced its operations.
08:40To achieve these force levels, the Americans subsequently redeployed the 7th U.S. Corps,
08:45then stationed in Germany, to Saudi Arabia.
08:52On the 29th of November, U.N. Resolution 678 approved Bush's decision to use force, by
08:59authorizing the coalition to employ all possible means to reverse Iraq's aggression.
09:06The resolution gave Saddam until the 15th of January, 1991, to withdraw from Kuwaiti
09:11soil, after which the coalition would employ military force to compel his withdrawal.
09:22During December and into January, 1991, Bush went an extra mile for peace through further
09:28diplomacy.
09:29But continuing Iraqi obstruction merely infuriated America's diplomats.
09:35Once Iraq invades Kuwait, Saddam is in an awkward position when he realizes that he
09:42is not going to be allowed to stay in Kuwait.
09:47Consequently he has to construct a situation in which he can be seen in some way the heroic
09:53victim or the fighter for Arab rights.
09:59Saddam himself required heroic defeat, rather than humiliating withdrawal, and Bush required
10:05something similar, but from the other perspective.
10:08Let's get into this war, I call upon all Arabs to start a holy war.
10:16Consequently the vital deadline of the 15th of January came and passed.
10:23That night, the world held its breath, awaiting news of the outbreak of war in the Middle
10:28East.
10:29Yet all remained quiet.
10:34Millions of people across the globe had only to wait a little longer, however, before hostilities
10:38commenced with a vengeance.
10:40For a 2.10am local time on the 17th of January, 1991, President Bush ordered Operation Desert
10:50Storm, the air campaign, to begin, with coalition warships launching 52 Tomahawk cruise missiles
10:58towards targets deep inside Iraq.
11:01Thundering across the darkened skies at 550 miles per hour, the deadly missiles navigated
11:07themselves towards their targets using the digitized mapping data their targeting software
11:12contained.
11:14Simultaneously, 700 coalition aircraft commenced strikes against targets across Iraq.
11:25In Baghdad, camera-laden western journalists endeavored to capture the startling sights
11:31and sounds of those first hours of the war.
11:36Darkness gradually extended through Baghdad as its electricity generation facilities succumbed
11:41to coalition strikes, but the hundreds of streams of tracer fired from the city's anti-aircraft
11:47guns nevertheless eerily eased the darkness.
11:51Intermittently violent eruptions illuminated the night as coalition missiles and bombs
11:56found their targets, with devastating effect.
12:03Many of those deadly strikes against Baghdad that night had been delivered by dozens of
12:07small angular black aircraft that had streaked their way largely unnoticed through the darkness.
12:14These black jets were American Nighthawk stealth aircraft, on their way to devastate key strategic
12:21targets located within the Iraqi capital.
12:25The F-117A Nighthawk was one of the most famous weapons of war used during the Gulf War.
12:32The stealth fighter, the fighter that was, in inverted commas, invisible to the enemy.
12:38And it was of course used in the initial air campaign to try and fly stealthily towards
12:46the enemy air defences, normally with a partner.
12:49And whilst one illuminated the target, the other one would then fly its laser-guided
12:54weapon system onto the target and destroy them.
13:01Saddam reacted to these airstrikes by stepping up his propaganda war.
13:07He believed that Western public opinion could not tolerate sustaining heavy casualties during
13:12the liberation of Kuwait, whereas his own people could bear such privations.
13:17Consequently, Saddam chillingly promised to turn the conflict into a bloodbath for coalition
13:23soldiers by making it the mother of all battles.
13:33On the 18th of January, Saddam fired al-Hussein's Scud missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia.
13:40A modified Iraqi version of the relatively inaccurate Soviet Scud-B short-range ballistic
13:46missile, the al-Hussein could deliver a 550-pound warhead onto a town-sized target up to an
13:53impressive range of 400 miles away.
13:58The widespread assumption that these missiles carried the chemical warheads that Saddam
14:06previously had threatened to use created panic within Israel.
14:12Saddam calculated that if Israel entered the war against Iraq, the Arab contingents within
14:17the coalition would withdraw, as fighting alongside the hated Israelis would have been
14:22utterly unacceptable to any Arab leader.
14:27Such a development, Saddam reckoned, would destroy the notion that the coalition represented
14:32the consensus opinion of the international community, rather than the aims of a hawkish
14:37President Bush and his cronies, including the new British Prime Minister, John Major.
14:47In response, America rushed Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries to Israel to shoot down
14:52Saddam's incoming Scuds.
14:56Partly through this measure, the US hoped Israel would be persuaded not to retaliate
15:00against Iraq.
15:02Simultaneously, the coalition intensified the efforts already being undertaken by its
15:07special forces and aircraft to destroy Saddam's elusive mobile Scud missile launchers.
15:14During the rest of January, the Great Scud Hunt dominated coalition strategy.
15:19Initially, they relied on air power, but the problem for air power in negating the threat
15:26was that the Iraqis used shoot-and-scoot tactics.
15:30They set the missile launchers up, fired the missile, and then dashed off to some concealment,
15:35perhaps under a bridge or in a concealed bunker.
15:38By the time the coalition aircraft arrived, there was nothing to target, and so the coalition
15:43turned to their special forces, American special forces and the British SAS, dropped behind
15:49enemy lines to try and deal with the Scud threat.
15:53The special forces had to find those missiles in the moments between the commander stopping
16:01the vehicle and erecting the missile and launching the missile, or alternatively, stopping, not
16:08erecting and launching the missile, and driving on to somewhere else.
16:11They had to discriminate between dummy missiles and dummy transporters on the ground and the
16:16real thing.
16:18And they did a very good job, the special forces, but they didn't get all of the Scud
16:27missiles and their launchers.
16:29They couldn't realistically hope to get all of them.
16:32And as long as Saddam Hussein still had his modified Scud missiles, he could continue
16:39to attack the coalition forces and could continue to attack the Israelis in their effort to
16:45provoke the Israelis into entering the war.
16:49In those first days of the air war, the coalition concentrated on the strategic mission of gaining
16:55aerial superiority over the Kuwaiti theatre.
16:59The coalition achieved this by striking Saddam's strategic infrastructure for controlling the
17:04Iraqi war machine, particularly the national intercept centres of the Qari air defence
17:10system.
17:12These vital facilities acquired and distributed the essential battle management data that
17:17the Iraqi air force needed if it was to stand any chance of opposing coalition control of
17:22the skies.
17:26The first few hours of coalition air strikes left the Iraqi air force bereft of this battle
17:31management data.
17:32Consequently, an already beleaguered Iraqi air force found itself woefully outclassed,
17:38both technologically and in terms of the professional skills its pilots possessed.
17:43Very quickly, the Iraqi air force surrendered the skies to the coalition, either hiding
17:49timidly in its hardened bunkers or scuttling ignominiously off to the safety of internment
17:54in Iran, Iraq's neutral eastern neighbour.
18:00The origins of these strategic aspects of the coalition air campaign lay in Operation
18:06Instant Thunder, the plan drawn up by Colonel John Warden back in August 1990.
18:12This scheme envisaged a six-day strategic air effort that alone would destroy Iraq and
18:17force Saddam to withdraw.
18:20Warden believed firmly in the potency of strategic air power, that an independent air effort
18:26could win a war without ground action being necessary.
18:31Colonel Warden's Instant Thunder plan was based on his earlier Five Circles concept,
18:36which outlines his view on the nature of modern war.
18:40Warden saw the modern battle as a dartboard with five rings.
18:43In the inner ring was the enemy's strategic C4I capability, that's command, control, computers,
18:52communications and intelligence.
18:53They're strategic decision-making capabilities, and Instant Thunder was based on the assumption
18:59that a short strategic air campaign focused on the inner ring would smash Saddam's ability
19:06to control not just the Iraqi state, but the Iraqi war machine at the strategic level.
19:12And that would collapse the Iraqi state and allow for the liberation of Kuwait without
19:17any ground forces even being necessary.
19:22Even though Schwarzkopf remained unconvinced by these ambitious claims, Instant Thunder
19:27became the basis of the air plan finalized by mid-January 1991.
19:33The final air plan, however, was more extensive in duration and scope than Instant Thunder,
19:38and combined Warden's strategic aspects with extensive attritional efforts, primarily by
19:43B-52 bombers, to weaken the Iraqi forces deployed in the Kuwaiti theater.
19:49Indeed, Schwarzkopf stated that these attritional efforts had to degrade Iraqi ground strength
19:55by 50% before the coalition ground war could commence.
20:00In fact, the actual 43-day long coalition air war comprised of four very distinct elements.
20:08The four phases of the coalition air campaign started with, perhaps the most important,
20:13the gaining of air supremacy.
20:15The gaining of air supremacy allowed the Allies quite quickly to dominate the air flank, and
20:21therefore to be able to do with the air flank what they wished.
20:24To go on bombing raids, to transport airborne troops, to fly their helicopters, to resupply
20:30logistically for battlefield air interdiction and close air support.
20:34All the things that were going to follow.
20:38The second phase was the bombing of strategic targets, making it very difficult for the
20:43enemy to sustain violence against the coalition.
20:48Hitting bridges, oil refineries, ammunition dumps, even nuclear power stations, rendering
20:54it very difficult for them to project their force.
20:57The third phase became more important as the air war moved closer to the initiation of
21:02the ground offensive.
21:04This was the preparing the battlefield phase.
21:07This was the phase of attacking the Iraqi ground forces in the Kuwaiti theater.
21:13Once the ground war started, the air war moved into its fourth phase, operations to
21:18support the ongoing ground offensive.
21:21This would involve close air support, air support to the contact battle, and also air
21:28interdiction missions attacking enemy reserves and forces deep behind the front line.
21:41In late January 1991, as the aerial devastation of Iraq continued, the relative quiet of the
21:48coalition's ground positions in northern Saudi Arabia was rudely shattered.
21:54From the 29th to the 31st of January, Iraqi forces launched a successful surprise attack
22:00on the Saudi border town of al-Khafji.
22:02Simultaneously, American space satellites and JSTAR's intelligence aircraft detected
22:13additional Iraqi tank columns moving south toward al-Khafji to exploit the initial Iraqi
22:18success.
22:23Reacting quickly, coalition commanders employed tank-busting aircraft and assault helicopters,
22:29as well as ground firepower, to intercept and destroy these columns.
22:35Finally, Saddam realized just how devastating coalition military strength was.
22:45Saddam had got to the point where he realized that there was nothing going to stop some
22:49form of ground offensive, and Tariq Aziz, the acceptable face of the regime, I suppose,
22:56makes it clear that Iraq is willing to unconditionally and immediately withdraw from Kuwait.
23:01Because it doesn't fit into American and Western requirements, as it would enable Saddam to
23:09withdraw from Kuwait, retain his weapons of mass destruction, retain his armed forces
23:13intact and, to some extent, play the part of the injured party to the Arab world.
23:21As the relentless aerial strikes continued into mid-February, Bush rejected Saddam's
23:26proposed conditional withdrawal, and all thoughts turned to the now-imminent ground war.
23:34By now, the coalition believed its air campaign to have been so accurate that collateral civilian
23:39casualties had been minimized.
23:43Events like the bombing of the Amariya Shelter on the 13th of February, where 200 civilians
23:48died, remained rare exceptions.
23:55The air campaign was being sold to the media as a campaign in which civilians were not
24:02going to die, or at least they were not going to die unnecessarily.
24:06This was a high-technology campaign, where missiles were going to be guided through windows.
24:12This was where cruise missiles could fly up main streets and hit a target of a precision
24:17which was undreamed of, not 40 years earlier in the Second World War, but 10 years earlier.
24:25And unfortunately, sometimes it went wrong.
24:32By now, the coalition air campaign had proved devastatingly effective.
24:37It had smashed Saddam's ability to control his forces, had destroyed his army's logistical
24:42infrastructure and manoeuvre capabilities, and devastated Iraq's industrial base.
24:49Yet Iraq's battered military machine did not collapse as Warden had predicted.
24:54Indeed, it continued to function, albeit only after a fashion.
25:00Although the coalition aerial assault did a lot of damage to Iraqi command and control,
25:07landlines managed to survive most of the attack, and it was relatively easy to put out new
25:12landlines, with the result that although Iraqi communications were compromised, they were
25:19never actually destroyed, and it's quite clear from the movement of Iraqi troops during the
25:24ground war, in particular the Iraqi attempt to block 7th Corps in southern Iraq, that
25:30Iraq retained its ability to communicate with its military formations.
25:38Their power had not, after all, won the war by itself, and so the coalition readied itself
25:44for ground operations.
25:48Once the air forces had weakened the enemy, made them deaf, dumb and blind, it was up
25:54to the ground forces then to go in and to wrap up the situation, to destroy them, to
25:59take them out of Kuwait City and bring the war to an end, but undoubtedly the air campaign
26:05made that possible.
26:08In the following weeks, the American 7th and 18th Corps secretly redeployed behind the
26:13US Marines in the east, to assume new positions 200 miles farther west around Rafah.
26:19Schwarzkopf had switched the main effort of the coalition ground offensive way out west
26:24to outflank and envelop Saddam's frontier defense line.
26:32Schwarzkopf's final strategy for the ground war represented a well-orchestrated operational-level
26:38master plan, each of its various elements dovetailed together to produce a synchronized
26:43effort that would swiftly deliver decisive success.
26:48The first element of the plan involved attacks by US Marines and Arab forces in the east,
26:54striking directly towards Kuwait City.
26:57Simultaneously, Marine amphibious forces would maintain the deception of an impending
27:02amphibious assault on the Kuwaiti coast.
27:07In order to ensure that the Iraqi army held still for the operations that the coalition
27:14was going to conduct, they had to fix the Iraqi army in place, and the way that the
27:22coalition fixes the Iraqi army is by moving on Kuwait City. That focuses the Iraqi's attention
27:29on Kuwait. It ensures that they can't easily turn around to fight the coalition's more
27:37mobile armored forces in Iraq, because they are in the middle of fighting in and around
27:44Kuwait.
27:47Once these attacks had started, the main coalition thrust would commence out in the west, beyond
27:52the main Iraqi defense line. While French forces would advance to screen the coalition's
27:57left flank, Lieutenant General Frank's 7th US Corps would swing east in a great left
28:03hook to crush the Iraqi forces in the Kuwaiti theater, particularly the Republican Guard,
28:09against the sea. Simultaneously, the 1st UK Armored Division would advance to protect
28:15the inner flank of the 7th Corps' advance. On the northern or outer flank of Frank's
28:21advance, the 101st US Airborne Division was to initiate a series of air assaults deep
28:26into Iraq, to establish forward operating bases astride Highway 8, along the Euphrates
28:32Valley, thus blocking Iraqi reinforcements attempting to reach the Kuwaiti theater.
28:40The policy is, get the Iraqis out of Kuwait. And not an ounce of effort is expended in
28:49the Gulf War on anything else.
28:53Some analysts have expressed surprise that the coalition didn't pursue their advance
28:59beyond the Euphrates River, up towards Baghdad. The key reasons that the coalition stopped
29:04short of attacking Baghdad are mainly political. The mandate that they were pursuing, the UN
29:12resolutions, was to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Whether that mandate actually
29:19allowed the coalition to operate on Iraqi territory at all was certainly subject to
29:24some debate.
29:25Logistically, they had no chance of mounting a very swift attack once they'd driven through
29:31Kuwait into Iraq and towards Baghdad. They needed time to refit and reorganize themselves.
29:37By which time, the Iraqis would have dug in, been perhaps much more passionate about defending
29:42their own ground, and a whole new Gulf War would have developed around that situation.
29:50Schwarzkopf's ground war plan supposedly implemented the new American maneuverist doctrine of air-land
29:56battle. Introduced in the early 1980s, this doctrine sought to restore decisiveness to
30:02warfare by using maneuver rather than traditional American attritional approaches. To do this,
30:09air-land battle targeted enemy centers of gravity, such as command and control, in order
30:14to destroy their cohesion. The doctrine also envisaged a joint campaign effort by air,
30:21naval, marine, and army forces that employed cutting-edge technology to see deep, far into
30:27enemy territory, and then to strike deep using aircraft, artillery, and missiles.
30:34Consequently, the modern air-land battlefield would be a complicated, non-linear one that
30:39would place significant demands on command and control. Air-land battle doctrine also
30:45advocates the development of fast-paced and synchronized joint military operations that
30:50reflect the principles of agility and depth.
30:53There were certain aspects of air-land battle in this campaign. Not the slightest doubt
31:00about that. But the reality was that the Americans engaged in an attritional battle. That divisions
31:08like the Tawakana, like the Medina, actually stood their ground, and in some cases fought
31:15extremely well. And it was only the fact that they were outgunned by massively superior
31:20technology that actually prevented them from, on occasions, inflicting very severe damage
31:26on American forces.
31:31By the 24th of February, 1991, the coalition believed that 500,000 Iraqi soldiers faced
31:37its forces in the Kuwaiti theater. But in reality, many Iraqi divisions had been under
31:43strength before they even arrived in Kuwait. Indeed, by the start of the ground war, the
31:49combination of coalition aerial strikes and mass desertion had further reduced this figure
31:54to about 250,000 troops.
32:00To resist the attempted coalition liberation of occupied Kuwait, Saddam adopted a static
32:05defensive strategy. He seems to have hoped that a ground war might never actually begin.
32:12If it did, Saddam expected the coalition merely to confine its operations to Kuwaiti
32:17soil rather than that of Iraq.
32:21Saddam thinks about military activity with a highly politicized pair of spectacles on.
32:27As a result, he believed that the West would find it politically very difficult to actually
32:35go into Iraq proper. In addition, Saddam looks at the United States as a country which is
32:41going to fear a sort of second Vietnam and going to fear the entanglement that an invasion
32:46of Iraq itself might actually produce.
32:50Should military action be required, this will not be another Vietnam. This will not be a
32:57protracted, drawn-out war.
33:01In the event of a ground war, the most Saddam could hope for was to force a face-saving
33:05compromise deal on the coalition by inflicting heavy casualties on them. Hence, his forces
33:11established defenses that aimed to channel attacking coalition forces into pre-surveyed
33:16killing zones, where concentrated artillery fire would inflict severe casualties.
33:25At worst, Saddam feared that he would be expelled from Kuwait, but without his iron grip on
33:30Iraq being threatened in the process. Losing Kuwait would have been a strategic setback,
33:37but not a disastrous one for Saddam, because his forces had already extensively looted
33:41the emirate and because he could portray this failure as the heroic defeat of a strong Arab
33:47leader who had dared to resist neo-imperialist Western intervention in the region.
33:54The real nightmare scenario for Saddam was a military campaign that not just liberated
34:00Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, but in the process undermined his control over the Iraqi state.
34:09What Saddam didn't fully appreciate is that no member of the coalition had the slightest
34:14intention of removing him from Iraq. They might have been delighted if Saddam had actually
34:22fallen or fallen to an assassin's bullet, but there was not the slightest intention
34:27that he should be removed from Iraq by force.
34:31At 4am on the 24th of February 1991, the ground war commenced, with coalition forces striking
34:39the Iraqi defences that faced the northern border of Saudi Arabia. By then, Saddam had
34:46positioned 24 regular army infantry divisions along this border as a first line of defence.
34:53In each of these positions, Saddam had concentrated his most effective ground formations in northwestern
34:58Kuwait or west of Kuwait's border with Iraq. This mobile reserve comprised eight regular
35:05army divisions, together with seven elite divisions of Saddam's politically reliable
35:10Republican Guard. The latter represented a key target that Schwarzkopf's ground plan
35:16intended to destroy.
35:19The Republican Guard was not just a better equipped, better trained, more motivated part
35:27of the Iraqi armed forces. The Republican Guard was a separate armed force which was
35:36especially politically reliable, that was especially responsible to the Iraqi regime.
35:44The deployment, therefore, of the Republican Guard might be seen in two ways. The first
35:49way, it might be seen as the sword that was actually behind the shield. Once the shield
35:54cracked open, the counter-attacking forces of the Republican Guard would be able to push
35:59the coalition back from whence they'd come, or in fact destroy them. Actually, they were
36:04deployed in the northern region of Kuwaiti theatre of operations, so that they could
36:09run away, so that they wouldn't be destroyed, if at all possible, by the rampaging coalition
36:14forces once they broke through. So they could get back to Baghdad and do their primary job
36:19in terms of political defence of the Ba'athist regime, and Saddam Hussein in particular.
36:26During the morning of the 24th of February, the first US Marine and Arab assaults into
36:31southeastern Kuwait overran the entrenched Iraqi defences more easily than the coalition
36:36had expected. This unanticipated success forced Schwarzkopf to initiate the 7th Corps' assault
36:43that same afternoon, earlier than planned. That evening, General Franks' divisions quickly
36:50breached the weak western end of Iraq's frontier defence line.
37:00During the following day, Franks' Corps, urged on by Schwarzkopf, conducted a depth battle,
37:06using aircraft, attack helicopters and long-range missiles to soften up targets behind the current
37:11front line, before then engaging them. By using these tactics, 7th Corps rapidly advanced
37:19north-east across the flat, featureless, sandy terrain, to overrun successive Iraqi positions.
37:26The thousands of coalition vehicles did not get lost, however, thanks to their use of
37:30the new global positioning system, GPS technology.
37:36Out in a flat, featureless desert, getting lost using conventional mapping would be very
37:42easy indeed. With GPS, military forces could know where they were in the middle of the
37:48night, in the middle of a sandstorm.
37:51Also absolutely crucial in going hand-in-hand with the global positioning systems at night
37:55was something called TOGs, Thermal Optical Gun Sights, which meant that with the ability
38:02to understand exactly where they were and exactly where the enemy were, they could actually
38:06engage the enemy at night. Using the thermals that the enemy's vehicles actually gave off,
38:12they could actually attack an enemy at a range of about 2,500 metres, which meant that before
38:17the enemy even knew that the coalition forces were there, and especially the Americans and
38:21the British, using these systems, they were dead.
38:26During the 24th and 25th of February, as Franks' army charged north-east in a great wheel,
38:32the 101st US Airborne Division launched a series of air assaults up to 110 miles deep
38:38into Iraqi territory, to isolate the Kuwaiti theatre from any Iraqi reinforcements.
38:44Meanwhile in the east, the gung-ho US Marines continued their frontal assault towards Kuwaiti
38:50City.
38:54The early successes achieved by every coalition assault during the first 24 hours of the ground
38:59war prompted Saddam to order a phased withdrawal north out of Kuwait on the 25th of February.
39:07This withdrawal, however, soon degenerated into a rout, characterised by mass surrenders.
39:13Some dispirited Iraqi soldiers even surrendered to an unmanned reconnaissance plane.
39:21Meanwhile, out in the west, during the 26th of February, General Franks' divisions continued
39:29to thunder rapidly east, past the Wadi al-Batin, in the process devastating the Tawakalna Republican
39:36Guard Division in the Battle of the 73rd Easting.
39:41That same day, coalition intelligence detected that some of Saddam's Republican Guard were
39:46preparing to withdraw north, and this prompted Schwarzkopf to demand that Franks speed up
39:51the advance of his forces.
39:55These repeated demands provoked a furious disagreement that day between the more cautious
39:59Franks and the CENTCOM commander, a rout subsequently fuelled by Franks' decision to halt some of
40:06his divisions that night.
40:09In the interest of not allowing one division to get too far ahead to expose its flanks,
40:19Franks has got to stop some of his formations to let others catch up.
40:25The main reason why Franks decided to halt his divisions at night on certain occasions
40:32was not fear of enemy action, but rather fear of blue-on-blue incidents, friendly fire incidents
40:39from his own forces in confused night-fighting operations.
40:46The sheer speed of advance achieved by coalition forces made it increasingly difficult to identify
40:52them from enemy ones on this now fluid battlefield.
40:56Unfortunately, several friendly fire incidents resulted.
41:01On the afternoon of the 26th of February, for example, an American A-10 Warthog plane
41:06destroyed two British Warrior armoured vehicles, killing nine soldiers.
41:12These sad incidents highlighted the fact that friendly fire now represented as great a threat
41:17to the coalition as the enemy.
41:20It was very difficult to actually recognise who was friendly and who was enemy on the
41:26battlefield.
41:27The technology at the time, which had very much developed as a result of the Vietnam
41:31War, was directed towards finding out what movement there was on the battlefield.
41:37But it didn't differentiate between friendly forces and enemy forces.
41:42And often when quick decisions are required on the battlefield, very chaotic, very high
41:48odds, mistakes were made.
41:52In the Gulf War, the level of casualties from enemy fire to the coalition forces was very
41:59very low.
42:01And that meant that deaths from friendly fire became a much larger proportion of those killed.
42:12If the enemy isn't killing your people, then the few who are killed by friendly fire become
42:21a larger proportion of the statistics.
42:25On the 27th of February, the 7th and 18th US Corps thrust into western Kuwait to converge
42:31on the coalition forces then advancing north beyond Kuwait City along the eastern seaboard.
42:38Late that day, however, shocking images began to flood the world's media, depicting the
42:43carnage that coalition air power had inflicted on the Iraqi forces who had attempted to escape
42:48from Kuwait north along the Basra Road.
43:00In what became known as the Basra Road Syndrome, these images quickly altered world opinion,
43:06creating the belief that the war had degenerated into the murderous rout of a beaten force
43:11by the awesomely powerful coalition.
43:19Fearing a powerful political backlash, consequently the coalition announced a ceasefire at 8 a.m.
43:27on the 28th of February, exactly 100 hours after the ground campaign had begun.
43:40Throughout this four-day ground campaign, coalition forces had encountered only modest
43:45Iraqi resistance. This fact goes a long way to explaining the unbelievably low casualty
43:50rate that the coalition suffered in the conflict, with a total of just 170 battle casualties.
43:57In fact, the Iraqis, despite their significant forces and modern equipment, performed unimpressively
44:03during the conflict, as evidenced by the capture of 48,000 Iraqi soldiers in just 100 hours
44:10of battle.
44:17There is a brilliant computer model, which in recent years has shown that if you model
44:24the battles of the Gulf War on a computer, and if on that computer you increase the level
44:32of Iraqi training, suddenly the war is much less one-sided than it was. It's not just
44:40so much that the Iraqi soldier was less motivated than the coalition soldier, although he was.
44:48The real difference in the Gulf War comes from the fact that the coalition soldiers
44:54were very much better trained than the Iraqi soldiers.
45:01On the day following the ceasefire, Iraq announced its compliance with all the UN resolutions
45:06concerning the invasion of Kuwait. Soon after, the Shiite and Kurdish minorities in southern
45:13and northern Iraq respectively rose up in rebellion against Saddam. However, the coalition,
45:19now anxious to disengage from the region, refused to intervene in what they described
45:24as an internal Iraqi affair. This disinterest encouraged Saddam, who dispatched his surviving
45:31Republican guards, to suppress these rebellions. Then, in the following months, UN weapons
45:37inspectors began the difficult job of locating and dismantling Saddam's facility for making
45:42nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
45:47The defeat doesn't necessarily erode Saddam's control over Iraq. In many ways it reinforces
45:54it. Partly because it enables Saddam to square the circle that he'd been facing since the
46:02end of the Iran-Iraq war, in that he told the Iraqis they'd won a great victory, but
46:07their economy and their standard of living was severely damaged. Now he has a wonderful
46:15excuse for Iraq's problems in the form of the coalition and what it's done.
46:21Saddam remained in power. The subsequent attempts to dismantle his weapons of mass
46:28destruction, his chemical, biological and possibly nuclear capabilities met with some
46:33success, but faced constant bureaucratic obstruction and prevarication from within Iraq.
46:41At the strategic level, the Gulf War was an unqualified success. Saddam Hussein could
46:46not control the price of oil in the world. At an operational level, it did not achieve
46:54all of its aims, but it doesn't matter. As long as you achieve your strategic aims, then
47:01you can walk away and say that that was a victory.
47:05Today, Saddam Hussein still controls Iraq and still seems to pose a threat to the region.
47:13Through dogged obstructionism, Saddam eventually even managed to rid himself of the UN weapons
47:18inspectors. In their absence, Iraq has reportedly begun to rebuild its weapons of mass destruction.
47:42Thank you for watching.
48:12For more UN videos visit www.un.org