They got pissed off and fought. The media even showed photos of Iraqis returning from other countries to fight for their native land. Had the planners forgotten how the Soviet people resisted the Nazis, even though Stalin arguably was a bloodier tyrant than Saddam?
Or how in the outgunned Finns resisted the Soviet invasion? Did the intellectuals who formulated the Gulf War 2 plans forget to read about these and countless other examples?
Sure, lots of Iraqis want to 86 Saddam, but unless some secret mass appeal to Bush from the Iraqi people surfaces, I have seen no evidence that they wanted a US-led invasion to do the job.
When I visited Iraq in September , several Iraqis quietly told me about their hatred for Saddam, but also voiced their extreme distrust of US intentions. Iraqis universally expressed contempt for our main junior partner. He referred to post World War I events when the British army repressed Iraqi independence and forced a monarch on the Iraqi people, a history that neither George Bush nor Tony Blair recounted in their various and sundry justifying sermons for launching an aggressive war.
In addition, because Iraqi leaders hoped that by allowing the UN inspectors to re-enter their country they might stop the war, they allowed for a good supply of their weapons to be destroyed. In addition, Bush and his Cabinet members lied. They said the plan was proceeding as expected just as the unexpected arose every hour of every day.
They invented reasons for the apparent failures. Perhaps, the Basra Shias recalled the first Gulf War when Bush 41 encouraged the Shias to rise against Saddam Hussein and then left them in the lurch after they did so. So, I conclude, Bush 43 lost Gulf War 2. Saddam Hussein won. He did not try to cut a deal for exile as the cowardly Saudi royalists offered. He remained in Iraq, in command of his forces. In early August , a National Guard unit from Ohio lost approximately twenty dead during a series of attacks over a several week period.
President George Bush has stated that U. In , President Bush sent an additional forty thousand American troops to Iraq. Known as the "surge," these forces succeeded in reducing the violence in Iraq. A devastated convoy of vehicles on a highway north of Kuwait City is visible in this aerial photo made on March 1, , during the Gulf War. Iraqi forces fleeing the city in every available vehicle were intercepted by allied forces and destroyed. The bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers hang from a truck abandoned by fleeing Iraqi army on the road in North-Eastern Kuwait, leading to Iraq, on March 11, Several blown-out wells damaged by retreating Iraqi soldiers in Al-Ahmadi oil-field burn on April 1, , in southern Kuwait.
Iraqi troops retreating after a seven-month occupation, smashed and torched wells, badly polluting the atmosphere and creating crude oil lakes.
In addition, up to eight billion barrels of oil were split into the sea by Iraqi forces damaging marine life and coastal areas up to kilometers miles away. The effects of Iraqi troops setting fire to the oil wells in Kuwait during February , is captured in this near-vertical photograph of the northwestern end of the Persian Gulf taken on April 7, The black smoke plumes of more than individual oil-well fires are being blown by the wind.
Kuwait City is visible at center-left north is to the right in this rotated image. Geysers of flame and thick, toxic smoke spew forth on March 10, , from just a few of the hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells set afire by fleeing Iraqi troops.
Several blown-out wells damaged by retreating Iraqi soldiers in Al-Ahmadi oil field burn on June 5, , in southern Kuwait. We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters theatlantic. A Hindu festival in Bangladesh, snowfall in northern China, fighting in Yemen, a plane crash in Brazil, a gathering of pelicans in Israel, Bonfire Night in England, and much more. One last look at the colorful beauty of this autumn, seen across the Northern Hemisphere.
Images of an foot-tall puppet, depicting a Syrian refugee girl, that has traveled 5, miles in recent months. Diwali celebrations in India, a walk through a pond in Belgium, a glacier in Argentina, anti-government protests in Bangkok, a foggy sunrise over San Francisco, and much more.
I want to receive updates from The Atlantic about new products and offerings. Skip to content. When these efforts failed, Hussein concluded a hasty peace with Iran so as to bring his army up to full strength.
On November 29, , the U. By January, the coalition forces prepared to face off against Iraq numbered some ,, including , U. Early on the morning of January 17, , a massive U. The Iraqi air force was either destroyed early on or opted out of combat under the relentless attack, the objective of which was to win the war in the air and minimize combat on the ground as much as possible.
By mid-February, the coalition forces had shifted the focus of their air attacks toward Iraqi ground forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq. A massive allied ground offensive, Operation Desert Sabre, was launched on February 24, with troops heading from northeastern Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and southern Iraq. Over the next four days, coalition forces encircled and defeated the Iraqis and liberated Kuwait.
At the same time, U. In all, an estimated 8, to 10, Iraqi forces were killed, in comparison with only coalition troops. Though the Gulf War was recognized as a decisive victory for the coalition, Kuwait and Iraq suffered enormous damage, and Saddam Hussein was not forced from power. The United States-led coalition failed to support the uprisings, afraid that the Iraqi state would be dissolved if they succeeded. In the years that followed, U. This resulted in a brief resumption of hostilities in , after which Iraq steadfastly refused to admit weapons inspectors.
In addition, Iraqi force regularly exchanged fire with U. Bush , son of the former president sponsored a new U.
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