Gulf war – Little known facts

source: cryan.com

On the final night of the war--within hours of the cease-fire--two U.S. Air force bombers dropped specially designed 5,000-pound bombs on a command bunker fifteen miles northwest of Baghdad in a deliberate attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.

     The decision to seek United Nations involvement was part of a larger, more cynical strategy of the Bush administration to circumvent Congress, to bypass the constitutional authority of Congress--and only Congress--to declare war.

     During the very week King Fahd was persuaded to invite U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia in order to defend his monarchy from the alleged threat of an Iraqi invasion, a U.S. intelligence officer who was secretly sent to Kuwait by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf reported that Iraq had began withdrawing its Republican Guard divisions from Kuwait entirely.

     Several weeks before the Baghdad was bombed on January 17th, 1991, U.S. intelligence agents successfully inserted a computer virus into Iraq's military computers. It was designed to disable much of Baghdad's air-defense system.

     The largest tank battle of the war, which has previously has gone unreported in any detail, conclusively demonstrated the superiority of American tanks and fighting doctrine over that of the Soviets. As a whole, the battles of the ground war showed that American military maneuverability clearly outclassed the plodding tactics of the Iraqis, who emphasized pitched engagements and linear movements as they had been taught by their Soviet advisers.

     The size of the Iraqi army in the Kuwait Theater of Operations was probably much smaller than claimed by the Pentagon. On the eve of the war, Iraq may have had as few as 300,000 solders, compaired to 540,000 estimated by the Pentagon.

     In official reports, the Pentagon has admitted that of the 148 American servicemen and women who perished on the battlefield, 24 percent of the total killed in action were victims of 'friendly fire'. Eleven more Americans were killed when un exploded Allied munitions blew up, raising the 'friendly fire' percent to 31 percent. Most solders said that the thousands of unexploded mines and bomblets they encountered, were more dangerous than enemy fire.

     On January 29 1991, an Iraqi force, apparently comprising two infantry and one tank battalions, crossed the Kuwait border in the south-eastern front and headed in the direction of Khafji, a deserted Saudi town, some 12 miles from the frontier. Taking the small Saudi garrison by surprise, the Iraqis occupied the town and resisted allied attempts to dislodge them for nearly two days. In the ensuing fighting the Americans suffered their first casualties in ground fighting when 11 marines were killed (7 of them from friendly fire). The Iraqi losses in men and equipment were far higher, amounting to dozens of dead and hundreds of prisoners.