The untold story of the world s fiercest tank battle nationalgeographic.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalgeographic.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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As the threat from the Soviet Union declined in the early 1990s, a new challenge for the US arose in the Middle East.
The first Gulf War was a textbook conventional war, but it featured an array special-operations missions that helped secure victory.
Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the US military shifted its focus from Russia to the Middle East.
In August 1990, Saddam Hussein s Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait, starting an international crisis that would end with Iraq s defeat by a US-led coalition six months later.
Form the Archives, 1991: A last call home, then off to war
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Form the Archives, 1991: A last call home, then off to war
30 years ago, the Heraldâs Paul McGeough found allied troops stationed near the Iraq-Saudi Arabia border âhappy and assuredâ as they prepared to invade Kuwait.
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A LAST CALL HOME, THEN OFF TO WAR
RUQI (on the Saudi border), Sunday: The Americans have gone to war happy, assured.
As a squadron of Abrahams tanks rumbled north across the desert this morning, white grins lit up black faces as the crews stood high in the turrets, which they turned on us.
How US special-operations forces helped the US military win its first post-Cold War victory msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Remember the Scud.
Here s What You Need to Know: The failure to destroy the launchers highlights how easy it can be to overestimate damage inflicted upon an enemy, and how difficult it is to hunt down an opponent intent on using hit-and-run tactics. Today, North Korea maintains a far larger arsenal of mobile ballistic missile launchers than Iraq ever did weapons which could likely survive the opening days of a conflict.
While assembling the coalition that would eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990–1991, one thing American military planners
weren’t worried about was Iraq’s Scud-B tactical ballistic missiles. True, Iraq had flung hundreds of the Soviet-designed missiles at Iranian cities during the Iran-Iraq war. But the weapons were derived from Nazi V-2 rockets dating back to World War II, and had difficulty hitting any target