HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/anarchy/essays/schoolsucks/gulfwar1.txt

Text File | 1996-04-27 | 12KB | 197 lines

subject = U.S. History
title = The Persian Gulf War
papers = Please put your
paper here.
The Persian Gulf War-the Feat of the Western Countries

    On
August 2nd, 1990 Iraqi military forces invaded and occupied the small Arab
state of Kuwait.  The order was given by Iraqi dictatorial president Saddam
Hussein.  His aim was apparently to take control KuwaitÆs oil reserves  (despite
its small size Kuwait is a huge oil producer; it has about 10 per cent of the
worldÆs oil reserves  ).  Iraq accused Kuwait, and also the United Arab Emirates,
of breaking agreements that limit oil production in the Middle East.  According
to Saddam Hussein, this brought down world oil prices severely and caused financial
loss of billions of dollars in IraqÆs annual revenue.
    Saddam Hussein had
the nearly hopeless task of justifying the invasion.  He plead the fact that
Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman province of Basra,  a city in the south
of Iraq.  However, the Ottoman province collapsed after World War I and todayÆs
Iraqi borders were not created until then.  There was also a further and more
obvious blunder in a bid to justify this illegal invasion.  Baghdad, the capital
of Iraq, had namely recognized Kuwaiti independence in 1963.  Furthermore,
Hussein claimed that Kuwait had illegally pumped oil from the Iraqi oil field
of Rumaila and otherwise conspired to reduce IraqÆs essential oil income.

    By invading Kuwait, Iraq succeeded in surprising the entire world.  The
USA ended her policy of accommodating Saddam Hussein, which had existed since
the Iran-Iraq war.  Negative attitude toward Iraq was soon a worldwide   phenomenon.
 The United Nations Security Council passed 12 resolutions condemning the invasion.
 The ultimate decision was to use military force if Iraq did not withdraw unconditionally
by January 15, 1991.  Then, when the deadline was set, it was time to start
preparing for the worst-the war.
    President George Bush confronted little
difficulty in winning AmericansÆ support for the potential war against Iraq.
 However, the government found it difficult to decide upon and state one overriding
reason for going to war.  Was it to oppose aggression or was it just to protect
global oil supplies?  Other powers were more directly concerned as consumers
of Persian Gulf oil, but they were not as eager to commit military force, to
risk their youth in battle and to pay for the costs of the war.  Critics of
President Bush continued to maintain that he was taking advantage of the issue
of energy supplies in order to manipulate the U. S. public opinion in favor
of war.
    After consulting with U. S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in
early August 1990, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia invited American troops onto Saudi
soil.  He had seen KuwaitÆs destiny; therefore, he wanted protection.  It was
also the interest of the USA to stop any further advantage of the Iraqi army.
 The deployment was called ôOperation Desert Shield.ö  These troops were armed
with light, defensive weaponry.
    On November 8, 1990 President Bush announced
a military buildup to provide an offensive option, ôOperation Desert Storm,ö
to force Iraq out of Kuwait.  The preparation of the operation took two and
a half months and it involved a massive air- and sea lift.
    Finally, in
January 1991, the U. S. Congress voted to support Security Council resolution
660.  It authorized using ôall necessary meansö if Iraq did not withdraw from
Kuwait by January 15.  Shrugging off this final warning, Saddam Hussein resolutely
maintained the occupation of Kuwait.
    The United States established a broad-based
international coalition to confront Iraq militarily and diplomatically.  The
military coalition consisted of Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand,
Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal,
South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom,
and the United States.  The war also was financed by countries which were unable
to send in troops.  Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were the main donors.  More than
$53 billion was pledged and received.
    Before the war, it appeared obvious
that Iraq would have very little chance against the Coalition.  The relative
strength between the parties was extremely unequal.  The most critical difference
was that the Coalition had a total of 2600 aircraft, over three times more
than IraqÆs 800 aircraft.  Most Arab observers thought Hussein would not last
more than six months.  Lieutenant General Khalid bin Sultan, the commander
of the Arab coalition forces, gave IraqÆs leader only 40 days, and repeated
this prediction many times.   IraqÆs prospect was dreary.
    President George
Bush waited two days after the UN deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait
before ordering the Coalition to begin action against Iraq.  The winds of Desert
Storm began howling across Iraq on January 17, 1991, at 2.30 am Baghdad time.
 Bhagdad was bombed fiercely by the coalitionÆs fighter airplanes in the first
night of the war.  An interesting fact is that several weeks before this, US
intelligence agents successfully inserted a computer virus into Iraq's military
computers.  It was designed to disable much of Baghdad's air-defense system.


    To minimize casualties, the coalition forces, under the command of  U.
S. General Norman Schwarzkopf, pursued a strategy beginning with five weeks
of intensive air attacks and ending with a ground assault.  Drawing on its
1,800 planes, land- and carrier-based, the United States flew the greatest
number of sorties.  The British, French, and Saudis made up most of the rest.
 Besides the tremendous air power, the coalition deployed technologically advanced
weapon systems, such as the unmanned Tomahawk cruise missile, advanced infrared
targeting that illuminated Iraqi tanks buried in the, sand and laser-guided
bombs, ôsmart bombs.ö  Its use of brand new aircraft that never before had
been engaged in combat, such as British Tornados and U. S. F-117A  Stealth
fighters, gave the Coalition an accuracy and firepower that overwhelmed the
Iraqi forces.  The large-scale usage of air force and latest technology made
the war short and saved great numbers of Coalition soldiersÆ lives.
    After
establishing air superiority, coalition forces disabled IraqÆs command and
control centers, especially in Baghdad and Al Bashrah.  This caused the  communication
to fail between Baghdad and the troops in the field.  The next stage was to
attack relentlessly IraqÆs infantry, which was dug in along the Saudi-Kuwaiti
border, and the elite 125,000 man Republican Guard in southeastern Iraq and
northern Kuwait.  Iraq retaliated by using mobile launchers to fire Scud missiles
at Saudi Arabia and Israel, a noncombatant coalition.  Overall, HusseinÆs forces
launched 93 Scuds.  The United States countered this threat with Patriot antimissile
missiles, called also ôScudbusters,ö and commando attacks on Scud launchers.
 Patriot missiles gave an engagement rate of nearly 96 per cent.
    The coalitionÆs
air raids on IraqÆs infantry lowered Iraqi soldiersÆ morale dramatically.
It is easy to sense in the following quote from an Iraqi lieutenantÆs war diary
the powerlessness and fear that the soldiers felt during air attacks by the
Coalition:
ô2 February 1991     I was awakened this morning by the noise of an
enemy air raid.  I ran and hid in the nearby trench.  I had breakfast and afterwards
something indescribable happened.  Two enemy planes came toward us and began
firing at us, in turn, with missiles, machine guns, and rockets.  I was almost
killed.  Death was a yard away from me.  The missiles, machine guns and rockets
didn't let up.  One of the rockets hit and pierced our shelter, which was penetrated
by shrapnel.  Over and over we said, "Allah, Allah, Allah."  One tank burned
and three other tanks belonging to 3rd Company, which we were with, were destroyed.
 That was a very bad experience.  Time passed and we waited to die.  The munitions
dump of the 68th Tank Battalion exploded.  A cannon shell fell on one of the
soldiers' positions, but, thank God, no one was there.  The soldiers were somewhere
else.  The attack lasted about 15 minutes, but it seemed like a year to me.
 I read chapters in the Qur'an.  How hard it is to be killed by someone
 you
don't know, you've never seen and, can't confront.  He is in the sky and you're
on the ground.  Our ground resistance is magnificent.  After the air raid,
I gave great thanks to God and joined some soldiers to ask how each of them
was.  While I was doing that, another air attack began.  2 February at 2000
hours.ö
    The ground war began at 8:00 p.m. on February 23 and lasted exactly
100 hours.  This phase featured a massively successful outflanking movement
of the Iraqi forces.  Schwarzkopf used a deceptive maneuver by deploying a
large number of forces as if to launch a large amphibious landing.  The Iraqis
apparently anticipated that they also would be attacked frontally and had heavily
fortified those defensive positions. Schwarzkopf instead moved the bulk of
his forces west and north in a major use of helicopters, attacking the Iraqis
from their rear.  The five weeks of intensive air attack had greatly demoralized
the Iraqi front-line troops, causing wholesale desertions.  Remaining front-line
forces were quickly killed or taken prisoner with minimal coalition losses.
 Iraqi front-line commanders had already lost much of their ability to communicate
with Baghdad, which made their situation even worse.  On the final night of
the war, within hours of the cease-fire, two U.S. Air force bombers dropped
specially design
ed 5,000-pound bombs on a command bunker fifteen miles northwest
of Baghdad in a deliberate attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.
    President Bush's
decision to terminate the ground war at midnight February 28, 1991 was criticized,
because it allowed Baghdad to rescue a large amount of military equipment and
personnel that were later used to suppress the postwar rebellions of its Shiite
and Kurdish citizens.  In his own defense, the president asserted that the
war had accomplished its mandate.  The mission, given by the Security Council,
was to expel the Iraqi forces from Kuwait and reestablish Kuwaiti independence.
 BushÆs decision was probably influenced by his desire to maintain coalition
unity.  A particular reason was to keep on board the Arab members, who were
increasingly unhappy at the devastation inflicted on Iraq's infrastructure
and civilian population.
    Iraqi representatives accepted allied terms for
a provisional truce on March 3 and a permanent cease-fire on April 6.  Iraq
agreed to pay reparations to Kuwait, reveal the location and extent of its
stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and eliminate its weapons of
mass destruction. Subsequently, however, UN inspectors complained that the
Baghdad government was frustrating their attempts to monitor Iraqi compliance,
and UN sanctions against Iraq were kept in place.
    The following chart shows
total equipment and casualties of the Gulf War.  In addition, 300,000 Iraqi
soldiers were wounded, 150,000 were deserted, and 60,000 were taken prisoner
(an estimate of U. S. Defense Intelligence Agency).  The United States suffered
148 killed in action, 458 wounded, and 11 female combat deaths.  121 were killed
in nonhostile actions;  they were mostly victims of friendly fire.


    Table
01; Total Equipment and Casualties of Gulf War
                         IRAQ
          COALITION

        LOST     ON HAND        LOST    ON HAND
TANKS        4000    4230        4    3360
ARTILLERY        2140    3110        1    3633
ARMORED
PERSONNEL
CARRIER        1856    2870        9    4050
HELICOPTERS        7    160        17    1951
AIRCRAFT        240    800        44    2600

SOLDIERS        100
000    545 000        200    680 000