iraq war revisited..

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_01.jpg[/img]
Saddam and Hostage, August, 1990
On August 2, 1990, after a massive troop buildup, Iraq invaded Kuwait. As the West and the remainder of the Arab world grappled with how to respond, Iraqi forces moved on Kuwait City. Caught in the offensive were 15,000 foreigners, including 3,000 Americans who had been living and working in Kuwait. Saddam insisted that the hostages were not "human shields" but "heroes of peace." On August 23, the dictator appeared in a heavily orchestrated video with a group of hostages, focusing his attention on a 5-year-old Briton, Stuart Lockwood. Saddam playfully ruffled the young boy's hair and inquired (through a translator) if he was getting his milk. Stuart pointedly refused Saddam's invitation to sit on his knee.

[cinderella man]

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President Bush and the Troops, November 1990
Within days after the invasion by Iraq, the President and his advisers began to mobilize the American military. First, they dispatched warplanes that could be deployed should Saddam's forces grew bolder and move on the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Then, ground troops began to move into the region. By October, 210,000 U.S. soldiers, part of a force of 275,000, had taken up positions in the Gulf. On Thanksgiving, as the world waited to see what would happen, the President and First Lady visited the First Marine Division, stationed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_03.jpg[/img]
Operation Desert Shield
As the U.S. worked through diplomatic channels to build broad support for a counterstrike, President Bush and his advisers emphasized that the U.S. troops in the Gulf were defensive in nature, intended to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraqi aggression, and the operation was accordingly code-named Desert Shield. In this photo, troops of the First Cavalry train in Saudi Arabia.

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_04.jpg[/img]
Attack from Sea and Sky
Operation Desert Shield was rechristened Desert Storm on January 16, 1990, when the U.S. began a massive series of bombing strikes on Iraq's aerial defenses and communications centers. For the first time, the U.S. deployed in war its fearsome Tomahawk missiles, firing them from warships like the U.S.S. Wisconsin, above.

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_05.jpg[/img]
Home Front
Before the fighting began, as the troops built up, the prospect of going to war was debated endlessly across the U.S., from coffee shops to Congress. The country turned increasingly to its television sets, tuning in particularly to CNN, where the pros and cons of battle were chewed over endlessly. Lingering doubts persisted right up through the invasion, as polls showed that approximately half the country thought that the U.S. should wait longer for diplomacy to work. But on January 16, the terms of the debate shifted, as the country awoke to find itself at war.

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_06.jpg[/img]
War Council
Three of the principal architects of the U.S. war effort meet at a command center in Saudi Arabia, from left, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell; Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney; and CENTCOM Commander General Norman Schwarzkopf, who is credited with drawing up the war's basic strategy. In the months leading up to the war, Schwarzkopf developed a plan that took advantage of America's superiority in the air, using missiles and other aerial weapons to destroy what he termed Saddam's "center of gravity — his ability to wage war. That means Saddam Huseein himself because of the highly centralized leadership...The Republican Guard and his chemical, biological and nuclear capability."

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_07.jpg[/img]
View From Above
Unlike the second Gulf War, in which journalists routinely embedded with American troops on the ground, Desert Storm was largely carried out in the air, and coverage of it was largely rendered in videos that showed what the air strikes looked like to the airmen who carried them out. This composite of video stills shows a smart bomb (indicated by the arrow in the top left frame) hitting and destroying an Iraqi target.

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_08.jpg[/img]
The Ground War
After several weeks of pounding Saddam with missile strikes, the U.S. and its allies began to move ground units from their positions in Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. On the weekend of February 23-4, tanks and troops cut through the sand berms that Saddam's forces had created as defensive works, beginning what came be known as "The 100-hour War." TIME photographer Christopher Morris traveled with the 1st Marine Division Task Force Ripper, above, which was among the units tasked with taking Kuwait International Airport. Encountering resistance, the Marines flushed out the enemy with a withering barrage of fire from artillery, tanks and Cobra attack helicopters.

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_09.jpg[/img]
Fallen Brother
Perhaps the most iconic image to emerge from Desert Storm was taken by David Turnley, who was aboard this Medevac helicopter when a body bag was brought aboard. The man in the bag had been killed during fighting in the Euphrates Valley, where a Bradley armored vehicle was hit by direct mortar fire. During the firefight, medics quickly grabbed the body of the dead man, not knowing who he was, and evacuated the survivors, which included Sergeant Ken Kozakiewicz, 23, from Buffalo, New York. It was only once Sergeant Kozakiewicz was aboard the helicopter and the dog tags of the corpse were handed to him that he learned that the dead man was his friend, the driver of the Bradley.

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_10.jpg[/img]
The Oil Fields
As the Iraqis retreated, they left a terrible reminder of their brief stay in Kuwait behind them, setting fire to almost 600 oil wells as a "scorched-earth" tactic. The blazes spewed poisonous fumes across the region while consuming Kuwait's vast oil reserves and causing immeasurable damage to the local wildlife and environment. The presence of landmines made it difficult for firefighters to approach the wells and snuff them out. The effort took nearly ten months and cost close to $1.5 billion, not counting the value of the oil that was lost.

[Maximus]

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[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_11.jpg[/img]
The Highway of Death
Decimated and in disarray, the retreating Iraqi troops raced out of Kuwait in pell mell flight, fleeing in whatever vehicles they could commandeer along the roads leading north to Basra, Iraq's second largest city. The highways were so jammed with vehicles that one observer compared it to "Daytona Beach at Spring break." But for the allies' fighter bombers, the resulting traffic jams were like shooting fish in a barrel, and the result was a scene of carnage and wrecked vehicles that came be known as the Highway of Death

[cinderella man]

[img]http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/desert_storm/desert_storm_12.jpg[/img]
Welcome Home
After the very brief ground attack, the U.S. declared the war over, electing somewhat fatefully to not pursue the Iraqi army into their own soil and leaving Saddam in power. One of the results of this decision is that the American resolve for war was not fully tested. With so few American casualties — 232 American soldiers died in all — the President's approval ratings soared and observers declared the end to "Vietnam syndrome," as the country experienced a surge in pride and patriotism. The victory was celebrated at a ticker tape parade in June in lower Manhattan, not far from the World Trade Center, which, ten years hence, would turn out to be the starting point of another, far more wrenching war experience.

[cinderella man]

[quote author=Maximus link=topic=145438.msg1669472#msg1669472 date=1295513486]
sHa_clap4 sHa_clap4 sHa_clap4 nice thread nice thread nice thread cindu
[/quote] thankyou maxi