[Clanging] ♪ A-TEN-HUT!

At ease, everyone, and welcome to another edition of History in a Nutshell!

This user-requested episode is going to explore a much more recent historical event: The Persian Gulf War.

The Persian Gulf War, which includes Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Desert Sabre, was the last major conflict of the 20th century.

A coalition of around 35 countries participated in this war, against dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Iraq invaded its next door neighbor Kuwait in August 1990, and the Allied Coalition was formed with a goal of expelling Saddam Hussein's military forces from Kuwait.

Did you know that the Persian Gulf War was nick-named the "Video Game War"?

This was due to the Persian Gulf war being the first conflict in history to have live news broadcasts from Coalition equipment on the front lines transmitting a live feed straight into people's televisions!

Seeing Heads Up Displays, or HUDs from Coalition tanks and aircraft greatly resembled those seen in video games!

So why did Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait to begin with, and why was the formation of a coalition necessary to drive Saddam out?

In order to answer those questions, let us rewind back to the year 1980.

♪ [gunfire] One of the root causes of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was due to unresolved issues from the Iran-Iraq War.

The Iran-Iraq War was a bloody conflict which lasted eight years.

Iran and Iraq had, more or less, always viewed each other as enemies, and that conflict was a political one, as well as religious.

In 1979, the pro-Western Shah of Iran was overthrown, and the Shiite Muslim leader named Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power, establishing a new government based on Islamic law.

Khomeini encouraged Shiite Muslims in other countries in the Persian Gulf to rise up against their leaders, who were Sunni Muslims.

While the majority of Muslims in these Middle-Eastern countries are Shiite, the Sunni minority held political power; Saddam Hussein himself being one of these Sunni leaders.

Khomeini's rhetoric was viewed as a threat to the surrounding Sunni governments, and Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, with the goal of stopping the spread of a Shiite revolution in other countries.

After eight years of brutal fighting, there was no clear victor, with an estimated half a million casualties on both sides.

While the Iraqis had better-trained troops and more modern equipment, Iran had more soldiers available.

A U.N.-sanctioned cease fire in August 1988 ended that conflict.

Funding a war is indeed expensive, and Iraq racked up a massive debt during the Iran-Iraq War.

Iraq borrowed billions of dollars from the United States, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab nations.

Kuwait was one of Iraq's largest creditors, with Iraq owing around $14 billion dollars to that country alone!

Iraq did not have enough money to pay off its debts and rebuild its infrastructure.

Iraq desperately needed more money, and one of the ways the Iraqi government sought to do that was by selling more oil.

It's important to note that Iraq was one of the founding members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC.

OPEC is an oligopoly in the oil industry, and they work together to control oil production and prices, which affects the worldwide energy supply market.

Each OPEC member agreed to a quota or limit on the oil it would produce each year.

In the 1980s, new sources of oil had been found, causing an oil glut, or an oversupply, resulting in the driving down of oil prices.

With Kuwait and Saudi Arabia exceeding their oil production quotas, this did not help Iraq's financial situation.

Iraq asked to have its quota raised, and for other OPEC members to stop going over their set quotas.

Despite Iraq's demands, Kuwait and other OPEC countries continued exceeding their quotas.

At a meeting of Arab leaders in Jordan in February 1990, Saddam argued that Iraq's creditors should forgive the debts for stopping the spread of the Shiite revolution, but Iraq's creditors still wanted their money back.

Saddam accused Kuwait of conspiring with the United States, and openly threatened the Emir of Kuwait to forgive $10 billion of Iraq's debt, or else Kuwait would be invaded.

Saddam had other reasons to justify his threats against Kuwait: At a July 16 OPEC meeting, Saddam accused Kuwait of illegally siphoning oil from Iraq's side of the border of the Rumaila Oil Field during the Iran-Iraq War, by using a technique called "cross border slant drilling," and that Iraq should be compensated.

Iraq also did not recognize Kuwait's sovereignty.

According to the Iraqis, Kuwait rightfully belonged to Iraq; and Kuwait's border was "carved out by Western colonialists."

It did not matter to Saddam that Kuwait was already an internationally recognized country before Iraq.

Iraq itself was not internationally recognized until a League of Nations mandate after World War I!

♪ dramatic music ♪ These rising tensions in the Middle East did not go unnoticed to the rest of the world.

During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam had used chemical weapons on the Iranians, and even used poison gas against the population of Kurds living in northern Iraq.

Many Kurdish villages were gassed or destroyed by the Iraqi military, which rightfully drew harsh criticism from the United States.

Saddam's harsh treatment of political dissidents, and ambitions for developing nuclear weapons certainly did not help his public image either.

Despite world criticisms, Saddam Hussein remained defiant.

He threatened not only Kuwait, but any OPEC country that continued to exceed its oil production quota.

In July 1990, Iraqi forces began massing on the Kuwaiti border.

Kuwait, afraid of an invasion, reached out to other Arab nations for help.

The United States offered aid as well, but Kuwait turned it down out of fear of Iraqi retaliation.

One of America's closest allies in the Middle East, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak attempted to intervene and negotiate with Saddam, but Iraqi troops continued to increase on the Kuwaiti border, despite Mubarak's efforts at mediation.

Other Arab nations viewed Saddam's mobilization of troops as bluffing.

It turns out, Iraq was indeed not bluffing.

[chanting] Saddam complained that Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had "stabbed Iraq in the back with a poisoned dagger."

During a meeting in Saudi Arabia between July 31 and August 1, Kuwait's emissary promised Iraq that Kuwait would stop overproducing oil and forgive Iraq's war debts, but the Iraqis walked out, and peace talks collapsed.

The orders were issued, and on August 2, 1990, Saddam's Iraqi army, about 100,000 strong, invaded Kuwait.

What little resistance Kuwait had was crushed, and the Emir barely escaped with his life.

Saddam sincerely believed he could invade Kuwait and get away with it.

He did not believe that the United States would intervene against Iraq.

You have to remember, in the year 1990, the last major conflict America faced was the Vietnam War, and let's just say that at that time, the Vietnam War was still a touchy subject.

For the United States, the ghosts of the past were very real, and Saddam did not think that America would want to get involved in another unpopular foreign war with possibly high casualty rates.

The United Nations Issued Resolutions 660 and 661: the U.N. Security Council condemned Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, demanding immediate withdrawal.

The U.N. also called for an economic boycott of Iraq.

Many countries, including the United States saw Saddam's actions as a potential threat.

The President of the United States, George H.W.

Bush, met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Aspen, Colorado, to discuss what to do about the problem in Kuwait.

Prime Minister Thatcher insisted that Saddam, another "potential Hitler" must not only be stopped, but thrown out of Kuwait so decisively that he would never entertain the idea of doing it again.

On August 5, 1990, President Bush declared that America will commit to liberating Kuwait.

<President Bush>...anything of value, especially oil.

I pledge here today that the United States will do it's part to see that these sanctions are effective and to induce Iraq to withdraw without delay from Kuwait.

<narrator> When satellite imaging showed 2 Iraqi divisions approaching Kuwait's border with Saudi Arabia, it was decided that beefing up Saudi Arabia's defenses was crucial.

If Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia, Saddam could potentially control 20 percent of the world's total oil supply.

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney traveled to Saudi Arabia to convince Saudi leaders to accept American aid, for the possibility of Iraq also invading Saudi Arabia was high.

The King of Saudi Arabia eventually agreed, and American forces, under command of General Norman Schwarzkopf began mobilizing in Saudi Arabia.

Phase I, the defense of Saudi Arabia, is known as Operation Desert Shield.

More than 500 thousand American troops were sent to Saudi Arabia; the largest single movement of troops since the beginning of the Second World War!

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait had also soured its relationships with other Arab and Western nations.

Soon, Great Britain, France, and Egypt also began committing troops to Saudi Arabia.

These are the beginnings of the Allied Coalition.

The Premier of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, not wanting to challenge Russia's relationship with the United States, agreed to support this allied coalition as well.

Saddam was both enraged and surprised at this response!

The next step was to take back Kuwait, but how?

Some believed this could be done by pushing for harder U.N. sanctions, but there would be no guarantee of results.

President Bush met with top military brass to discuss how to take back Kuwait.

General Schwarzkopf was concerned that there would not be enough troops to both liberate Kuwait, and defeat the occupying force.

Colin Powell reassured General Schwarzkopf: "If you are required to go to war with Iraq, you will have the forces that you need.

"On October 29, 1990, the U.N. passed Resolution number 674: If Iraq continued to ignore U.N. demands to leave Kuwait, the U.N. would take further measures to remove the Iraqi army.

One month later on November 29th, the U.N. passed resolution number 678, which established January 15, 1991, as Iraq's deadline for leaving Kuwait.

January 15 came and went, and despite being given multiple chances, Saddam still refused to leave.

Phase II, called Operation Desert Storm, began on January 17, 1991: Apache and Pave Low helicopters from Task Force Normandy took out key Iraqi radar sites to make way for the main aircraft attack.

[gunfire] 10 F-117 Stealth Fighters made their way to Baghdad to begin bombing the capitol city.

Soon after, Coalition air forces began bombing targets all over Iraq.

<Lt Col. Joel Rush> That's what I always had in mind was looking for tanks.

and if you shot it and it blew up, it was a tank.

If you shot it and it didn't blow up, we'd called it an artillery piece and at night it was kind of hard to tell.

Everything looked the same to us.

So the targets we were looking for were the tanks and the Iraqis had them set up they were in revetments that were basically they were just big sand berm shaped like a sea, and then the tank with your infrared target system that looked like a box sitting down there and they would have those APCs.

Anything that was shooting that you knew was alive that was a good target to go after, especially like a triple A piece, because we took that kind of personally if the guys were shooting back that was something you wanted to get rid of.

<narrator> Over a period of 5 to 6 weeks, and more than 100,000 "sorties, "Iraq became severely weakened after these round-the-clock bombing runs.

About one week into Desert Storm, air planners speculated that they could win the war by air power alone, but this turned out to be a miscalculation.

Even in the face of all the destruction in Iraq, Saddam and his troops still refused to leave Kuwait.

Coalition air forces were running out of targets in Iraq, and the bombing eventually became pointless.

A ground war looked increasingly likely.

Saddam didn't believe America was ready for another ground war, and that American leaders were still traumatized by Vietnam.

Saddam retaliated by firing SCUD missiles into Israel, with the hopes of provoking an early ground war, ♪ but the Coalition did not take the bait.

♪ On January 29, 1991, Saddam's next move was to deploy 51 Iraqi divisions to take the abandoned Saudi Arabian city of Khafji.

Little did the Iraqis know that United States Marines had been monitoring their troop movements, and two Marine reconnaissance teams were already in Khafji waiting for them.

The Battle of Khafji commenced.

[gun fire] The Iraqis came close to capturing the outnumbered Marines trapped in the city, but to Saddam's dismay, the Marines held out just long enough for Saudi reinforcements to arrive, and Coalition air support prevented two further Iraqi divisions from reaching Khafji.

♪ Later, in February, underneath the smoke of burning oil fields, two armies faced each other on the edge of battle.

At 4 a.m. on February 24, United States Marine forces blazed into Kuwait, but, surprisingly, there was nowhere near as much resistance by the Iraqi army, as had been anticipated.

Thousands of Marines poured into Kuwait, but many Iraqi soldiers chose not to attack.

The prior weeks of relentless air strikes demoralized many Iraqi conscript soldiers.

About half of the Iraqi army deserted before the Marines arrived, and many others surrendered to the Marines at the first opportunity.

According to General Wafic Al Samarrai: "This wasn't fair to our proud army.

Our army didn't believe in this war.

It was a dirty war, this war in Kuwait."

A sizeable amount of the soldiers in the Iraqi Army, who had previously served in the Iran-Iraq War, got fed up with all the fighting.

U.S. Marines bulldozed so quickly through Kuwait that General Norman Schwarzkopf became concerned that their progress would compromise his plan to trap and destroy Saddam's elite Republican Guard forces.

The Republican Guard was holding position deep in enemy territory.

British and American tank forces were not scheduled to attack until the next day, so General Schwarzkopf advanced their attack to 3 p.m. that same day.

On February 25, U.S. Marines pushed ahead toward Kuwait City, and to Saddam's second line of defense, closely followed behind by U.S. Army and British armored divisions.

Despite a counter-attack personally approved by Saddam Hussein himself, the U.S. Marines gained the upper hand, and took Kuwait City.

The counter-attack was Saddam's last ditch effort to repulse the Marines out of Kuwait, and when it failed, Saddam had no choice but to begrudgingly order his troops to retreat toward Iraq.

It was during this attempt to fall back between February 26th and 27th that Saddam's retreating army was obliterated by Coalition air forces.

[explosions] The aftermath of all this destruction along Highway 80 is remembered today as "the Highway of Death."

Kuwait had been liberated, and the Allied Coalition turned their sights toward Iraq.

Saddam's army was crumbling around him, but Americans still had yet to engage the Republican Guard.

General Schwarzkopf was not going to allow the Republican Guard to escape, and ordered U.S. Army tanks to drive hard into Iraq.

The upcoming battle called the Battle of 73 Easting was one of the last major tank battles in the 20th century.

The U.S. Army's 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment went toe-to-toe against Iraq's Republican Guard: nine M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks and 12 M2 Bradley infantry carriers versus Iraqi T-62 and T-72 main battle tanks, and BMP-1 infantry carriers.

Iraq may have outnumbered the Americans, but the Americans held several distinct advantages: American forces had GPS satellite imaging, to avoid getting lost in the Iraqi desert, sloped or angled composite armor called CHOBHAM armor, which is far more effective at deflecting projectiles, higher caliber rounds for the M1A1 Abrams tanks, compared to what the Iraqis were using, and American tank gunners with thermal targeting systems.

The Iraqis, on the other hand, were using older, obsolete Soviet technology, for the most part.

Iraqi tanks had manual targeting, which is much slower compared to the tech used by the Coalition.

The main battle tank of the Republican Guard, the "Lion of Babylon" was not even a true Soviet tank!

The T-72M or "Monkey" variant of tanks were exported Polish knock offs.

So, why did Saddam decide to fill his arsenal with such ineffective military tech?

Well, long story short, Saddam preferred quantity over quality, in order to rival neighboring countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

The Coalition's equipment was also newer; many of Iraq's vehicles used in the Persian Gulf War had already experienced wear-and-tear from the Iran-Iraq War.

The Battle of 73 Easting resulted in a decisive American victory...28 Republican Guard tanks were destroyed in just 23 minutes!

Some of the American service members who participated in that battle have even referred to the engagement as a "turkey shoot"!

♪ The Republican Guard was now on the run.

When the Republican Guard's rear guard was destroyed at the Battle of Medina Ridge, Saddam Hussein became frightened that the Allies would push forward into Baghdad, and that his defeat was imminent.

General Schwarzkopf was fully prepared to have American tanks continue to push Saddam's forces toward the sea, but Colin Powell knew this would mean another day of fighting.

Powell became concerned that the horrific images seen on the televisions in American households would stain the reputation of the U.S. Military, and pushed for President Bush to declare a cease fire.

♪ All of the main objectives had been accomplished, and there was no need for any more fighting.

Both Colin Powell and General Schwarzkopf were in agreement with President Bush, and the cease fire went into effect at midnight, February 28, 1991.

♪ Some American military advisors, as well as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher believed that this cease fire was premature, but the decision stood.

General Schwarzkopf: "I was just glad to have the victory in our hands with a minimum loss of casualties, and I was willing to settle for that, because that's a hell of a lot more than anybody's had in war in as long as I can remember!"

♪ As a result of this war, Iraq's military was driven out of Kuwait; and its strength crippled.

So, why wasn't Saddam completely removed from power in Iraq for his war crimes, and for suffering such a humiliating defeat?

There are several reasons for this.

the idea of pushing forward into Baghdad had been entertained, but ultimately did not happen.

The U.N. sanctions specifically called for Iraq to be expelled from Kuwait; nowhere in those sanctions did a full invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein appear.

Second, there was the strong possibility that a full invasion of Iraq would split apart the coalition.

An invasion would lead to a super-expensive occupation of Iraq, of which America would foot 100 percent of the bill, and the American military would have ended up staying much longer than it had any business being there.

Lastly, there was the strong possibility that the resulting political unrest in Iraq would lead to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein anyway.

There were indeed rebellious uprisings in Iraq: civilians who disliked Saddam, disgruntled Iraqi soldiers, and even Kurds took up arms against the regime that they despised.

Unfortunately, as a result of the cease fire talks at the end of the war, Saddam and his top military brass were allowed to remain in power.

These rebellions were brutally suppressed by the Iraqi military, since it was freely allowed to operate within their own territory.

Reprisals against rebel villages were terrible.

American military personnel were completely helpless; all they could do was stand by and watch, as they were ordered not to intervene.

The Kurds in Northern Iraq had to flee, and Saddam continued to remain in power.

The victory in the Persian Gulf was deemed by some as hollow in the eyes of public opinion, however many others felt this victory helped America regain its confidence after the Vietnam War.

Saddam Hussein ruled until the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The political climate in Iraq continues to remain unstable, as its future remains uncertain after Saddam Hussein's deposition.