Air campaign
A day after the deadline set in Resolution 678, the coalition launched a massive air campaign codenamed Operation Desert Storm with more than 1,000 sorties launching per day, beginning early morning on January 17, 1991. Five hours after the first attacks, Baghdad state radio broadcast a voice identified as Saddam Hussein declaring that "The great duel, the mother of all battles has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins."
Weapons used in the air campaign included smart bombs, cluster bombs, daisy cutters and cruise missiles. Iraq responded by launching 8 Scud missiles into Israel the next day. The first priority for coalition forces was destruction of the Iraqi air force and anti-aircraft facilities. This was quickly achieved and for the duration of the war Coalition aircraft could operate largely unchallenged. Despite Iraq's better-than-expected anti-aircraft capabilities, only one coalition aircraft was lost in the opening day of the war. Stealth aircraft were heavily used in this phase to elude Iraq's extensive SAM systems and anti-aircraft weapons; once these were destroyed, other types of aircraft could more safely be used. The sorties were launched mostly from Saudi Arabia and the six coalition aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf.
The next coalition targets were command and communication facilities. Saddam had closely micromanaged the Iraqi forces in the Iran-Iraq War and initiative at the lower levels was discouraged. Coalition planners hoped Iraqi resistance would quickly collapse if deprived of command and control. The first week of the air war saw a few Iraqi sorties but these did little damage, and thirty-eight Iraqi MiGs were shot down by Coalition planes. Soon after, the Iraqi airforce began fleeing to Iran, with between 115 to 140 aircraft flown to Iran [12]. On January 23, Iraq began dumping approximately 1 million tons of crude oil into the gulf, causing the largest oil spill in history.
The third and largest phase of the air campaign targeted military targets throughout Iraq and Kuwait: Scud missile launchers, weapons of mass destruction sites, weapons research facilities and naval forces. About one third of the Coalition airpower was devoted to attacking Scuds, which were on trucks and therefore difficult to locate. In addition, it targeted facilities useful for both the military and civilians: electricity production facilities, nuclear reactors, telecommunications equipment, port facilities, oil refineries and distribution, railroads and bridges. Electrical power facilities were destroyed across the country. At the end of the war, electricity production was at four percent of its pre-war levels. Bombs destroyed the utility of all major dams, most major pumping stations and many sewage treatment plants.
In most cases, the Allies avoided hitting civilian-only facilities. However, on February 13, 1991, two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroyed the Amiriyah blockhouse, which the Iraqis claimed was for the auspices of an air shelter. U.S. officials claimed that the blockhouse was a military communications center, but Western reporters have been unable to find evidence for this. The White House claims, in a report titled Apparatus of Lies: Crafting Tragedy, that U.S. intelligence sources reported the blockhouse was being used for military command purposes. [13] In his book, Saddam's Bombmaker, the former director of Iraq's nuclear weapon program, who defected to the west, supports the theory that the facility was used for both purposes.
We sought refuge several times at the shelter.... But it was always filled.... The shelter had television sets, drinking fountains, its own electrical generator, and looked sturdy enough to withstand a hit from conventional weapons. But I stopped trying to get in one night after noticing some long black limousines slithering in and out of an underground gate in the back. I asked around and was told that it was a command center. After considering it more closely, I decided it was probably Saddam's own operational base.
Iraq launched missile attacks on coalition bases in Saudi Arabia and on Israel, in the hopes of drawing Israel into the war and drawing other Arab states out of it. This strategy proved ineffective. Israel did not join the coalition, and all Arab states stayed in the coalition except Jordan, which remained officially neutral throughout. The Scud missiles generally caused fairly light damage, although its potency was felt on February 25 when 28 Americans were killed when a Scud destroyed their barracks in Dhahran. The Scuds targeting Israel were ineffective due to the fact that increasing the range of the Scud resulted in the dramatic reduction in accuracy and payload. On January 29, Iraq attacked and occupied the lightly Marine defended Saudi city of Khafji with tanks and infantry. However, the Battle of Khafji ended when Iraqis were driven back by Saudi forces supported by US Marines with close air support over the following two days. Khafji was a strategic city immediately after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi reluctance to commit several armoured divisions to the occupation and subsequent use of Khafji as a launching pad into the initially lightly defended Eastern portion of Saudi Arabia was a grave strategic error. Not only would Iraq have secured a majority of Middle Eastern Oil Supplies, it would have found itself better able to threaten the subsequent U.S. deployment along superior defensive lines.
The effect of the air campaign was to decimate entire Iraqi brigades deployed in the open desert in combat formation. The air campaign also prevented effective Iraqi resupply to forward deployed units engaged in combat, as well preventing the large number (450,000) of Iraqi troops from achieving the force concentration essential to victory.
The air campaign had a significant effect on the tactics employed by opposing forces in subsequent conflicts. No longer were entire divisions dug in the open facing U.S. forces but rather they were dispersed, e.g. Serbian forces in Kosovo. Opposing forces also reduced the length of their supply lines and the total area defended. This was seen during the war in Afghanistan when the Taliban preemptively abandoned large swaths of land and retreated into their strongholds. This increased their force concentration and reduced long vulnerable supply lines. This tactic was also observed in the invasion of Iraq when the Iraqi forces retreated from northern Iraqi Kurdistan into the cities.
Ground campaign
On February 22, 1991, Iraq agreed to a Soviet-proposed cease-fire agreement. The agreement called for Iraq to withdraw troops to pre-invasion positions within three weeks following a total cease-fire, and called for monitoring of the cease-fire and withdrawal to be overseen by the UN Security Council. The US rejected the proposal but said that retreating Iraqi forces would not be attacked, and gave twenty-four hours for Iraq to begin withdrawing forces.
On February 24, the U.S.-led forces began Operation Desert Storm, the ground portion of its campaign. Soon after, U.S. Marines and their Arab allies penetrated deep into Kuwait, collecting thousands of deserting Iraqi troops, weakened and demoralized by the extensive air campaign. A few days into the campaign, Kuwait City was recaptured by units of the Kuwaiti Army.
At the same time, the U.S. VII Corps launched a massive armored attack into Iraq, just to the west of Kuwait, taking the Iraqis completely by surprise. The left flank of this movement was protected by the French 6th Light Armored Division (which included units of the French Foreign Legion), and their right flank by the British 1st Armoured Division. Once the allies had penetrated deep into Iraqi territory, they turned eastward, launching a massive flank attack against the Republican Guard. Tank battles flared as the Republican Guard attempted to retreat, which the Allies won with minimal losses.
General Colin Powell briefs President George H. W. Bush and his advisors on the progress of the ground war
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General Colin Powell briefs President George H. W. Bush and his advisors on the progress of the ground war
Once Iraq had decided it was not going to advance into the eastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia, there was no reason for Iraqi forces to deploy further south from Kuwait City in great numbers. The decision to deploy significant quantities of troops along the desert border of Kuwait unnecessarily increased the length of Iraqi supply lines. Secondly once the decision had been made to deploy along the border, the decision to extend it only slightly along the Iraqi border invited a massive flanking. Indeed the Iraqis did not possess enough forces to maintain a long enough front along the border of Kuwait and South Western Iraq. Therefore it was imperative that the deployment and the front should have been shortened to just South of Kuwait City and extending to the outskirts of Basra. Iraq possesed only one absolute military advantage over the allies being the quality and quantity of its artillery pieces. Most of Iraq's artillery pieces were towed and hence not well suited to large expansive maneuvers. This also meant that it was in Iraq's interest to slow down the movement of opposition forces and engage along lines that could not be easily broken or flanked.
The allied advance was much swifter than US generals expected. On February 26, Iraqi troops began retreating out of Kuwait, setting fire to Kuwaiti oil fields as they left. A long convoy of retreating Iraqi troops formed along the main Iraq-Kuwait highway. This convoy was bombed so extensively by the Allies that it came to be known as the Highway of Death. One hundred hours after the ground campaign started, President Bush declared a ceasefire and on February 27 declared that Kuwait had been liberated.
The "Highway of Death".
Both sides had roughly equal numbers of troops- approximately 540,000 Allied troops to approximately 545,000 Iraqi troops. A further 100,000 Turkish troops were deployed along the common border of Turkey and Iraq. This caused significant force dilution of the Iraqi military by forcing it to deploy its forces along all its borders (except ironically its bitter enemy Iran). This allowed the main thrust by the Americans to not only possess a significant technological advantage but also an equality in force numbers.
The main surprise of the ground campaign was relatively low Allied casualties. This was due to some tactical errors on the part of the Iraqis such as deploying tanks behind sand berms which offered no protection against the kinetic energy rounds used by the M1 Abrams and the other coalition tanks. Fighting from such obvious defensive positions gave away the location of the Iraqi tanks from a great distance. The Iraqi forces also failed to utilize the advantage that could be gained from using urban warfare - fighting within Kuwait City, which could have inflicted significant casualities on the attacking forces. Urban combat reduces the range at which fighting occurs and thus favours the technologically inferior force when it is defending. This has been proven most recently in the combat between U.S. forces and Iraqi partisans in urban environments after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The confines of the urban geography would have reduced the greatest advantage of the Allies, the ability to kill at long range.
The end of hostilities
A peace conference was held in Iraqi territory occupied by the coalition. At the conference, Iraq won the approval of the use of armed helicopters on their side of the temporary border, ostensibly for government transit due to the damage done to civilian transportation. Soon after, these helicopters — and much of the Iraqi armed forces — were refocused toward fighting against a Shiite uprising in the south. In the North, Kurdish leaders took heart in American statements that they would support an uprising and began fighting, in the hopes of triggering a coup. However, when no American support was forthcoming, Iraqi generals remained loyal and brutally crushed the Kurdish troops. Millions of Kurds fled across the mountains to Kurdish areas of Turkey and Iran. These incidents would later result in no-fly zones being established in both the North and the South of Iraq. In Kuwait, the Emir was restored and suspected Iraqi collaborators were repressed. Eventually, over 400,000 people were expelled from the country, including a large number of Palestinians (due to their support of and collaboration with Saddam Hussein).
There was some criticism of the Bush administration for its decision to allow Saddam Hussein to remain in power, rather than pushing on to capture Baghdad and overthrowing his government. In their co-written 1998 book, A World Transformed, Bush and Brent Scowcroft arguing that such a course would have fractured the alliance and would have had many unnecessary political and human costs associated with it.
In 1992, the United States Secretary of Defense during the war, Dick Cheney, made the same point:
I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.[14]
Instead of greater involvement of its own military, the United States hoped that Saddam would be overthrown in an internal coup. The Central Intelligence Agency used its assets in Iraq to organize a revolt, but the Iraqi government defeated the effort.
On March 10, 1991, Operation Desert Farewell began to move 540,000 American troops out of the Persian Gulf.
Coalition involvement
Members of the Coalition included Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States of America. Germany and Japan provided financial assistance instead of military aid. America asked Israel not to participate in the war despite air strikes on Israeli citizens. India wasn't a part of the coalition but did extend military support to the United States in the form of refuelling facilities.
Talvez as cagadas do Bush Jr. poderiam ter sido evitadas caso Saddam tivesse sido removido naquela época.
