Operation Desert Shield Desert Storm
On the morning of 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and in less than four hours the small country was under Iraqi control. Saudi Arabia was likely to be the Hussein regime’s next target. On 6 August 1990, King Fahd bin Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ad of Saudi Arabia invited friendly nations to participate in the defense of the royal kingdom, marking the beginning of Operation Desert Shield, the deployment of U.S. military forces to protect the Gulf region from further Iraqi encroachment. By 21 August, fighter, attack, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, airlift, and tanker aircraft were based in the Gulf region. That day, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney declared that the threat of an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia had ended.
In November 1990, the United Nations passed Resolution 678 authorizing the use of force to expel Iraq from Kuwait if Iraq did not leave by 15 January 1991. President George Bush requested congressional concurrence in the UN resolution, and, following lengthy and forthright debate, the Congress joined with the Bush administration in bipartisan votes of support on 12 January 1991. Saddam Hussein still showed no signs of leaving Kuwait, and the deadline of the 15th passed. Accordingly, President Bush signed a National Security Directive authorizing military action.
The violence of Desert Storm broke suddenly and furiously at 3 a.m. Baghdad time on 17 January 1991 as waves of coalition aircraft set forth on the largest air campaign since World War II. By dawn, Iraq was well on the way to losing the war, thanks to the strategic air campaign. The early morning attacks drove Saddam Hussein and his leadership underground, reducing its control over events. The most critical military support networks--command, control, communications, intelligence, integrated air defenses, and power generation--had been hard hit.
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