28 years ago it started....

28 years ago, Desert Storm started.  I remember the January 15 deadline for Saddam withdrawing from Kuwait via UN Resolution.  Saddam blew off the deadline, in my mind he truly believed that we wouldn't attack, because we were a paper tiger and the decadent West can't handle casualties from the "Mother of All Battles"from his  battle tested Army and with the exception of a few soldiers from the Vietnam conflict the American Army and armed forces were "green". Saddam had the worst timing possible.  If he had waited a couple of years he probably could have seized Kuwait and got away with it.  The wall had come down, the soviet were not threatening anymore , there was discussion of drawdown and demobilization from certain members of congress that was in a hurry to spend the :Peace Dividend".   Saddam didn't take into account changes in our doctrine, from the Red flag exercises, where we used the old Caesar saying, "I want our training to be bloody battles and our battles to be bloodless training".  The American Armed forces after 10 years of flush spending from the Reagan military buildup.  We had trained with "Airland Battle", where we were trained to decimate the soviet 2nd and 3rd echelons of battle.  We would use our air forces to go after the 2nd and 3rd while the ground forces fought the 1st echelon.  The Army was well trained, the Airforce was well trained and the Navy and Marines were well trained., well equipped, and highly motivated.  Especially since we were told "For the duration + 6 months," this told us that we were here to start it and finish it. no rotation policy like they did in Vietnam, General Schwartzkopf forbid it, he saw the destructive influence such a policy had on the U.S. Military.   The Iraqi's with the exception of the Republican Guard was a conscript Army and they were tired from war after 8 years with Iran.  The equipment they had was worn out and poorly maintained.
  The Air War started on January 17th at 3:30 in the morning we were woke up and told to "stand to" in full MOPP Gear level 4.  We suited up as fast as we could because we were convinced that the Iraqi's would counterattack with Chemical weapons.  We had no reason to doubt this because they have done it before to the Iranians and to the Kurds.  We had a couple of M-8 alarms but we really didn't have any real faith in the equipment.  To assist us, we had a real live chicken in a cage.  We were told that if there are any chemicals in the air, the chicken will keel over first before we got affected.  Granted we spent a lot of money building up the force in the 10 years, but the NBC gear wasn't as advanced as some of the other stuff.

                                                   Czech Chemical Detection vehicle
      The Czech Military(The former communist adversary sent over all their Chemical detection equipment and soldiers to help out.  I thought that was ironic former Warsaw Pact adversaries joining us to defeat the same stuff that they trained for.  We had the Chicken for several weeks then he just vanished..I figured that someone scarfed it up and cooked it.
       After the Apache's took out the Sam sites clearing the way for the massive air strikes to punish the Iraqi Capital,

As the Air Force methodically went after the Iraqi C3 Nodes, the Command, Control and Communications Nodes.  We had spent the buildup logging the location of every single one and waited until the Air War kicked off and we went after the logistic and infrastructure during the air war.  We also started going after the Republican guard which was the center of gravity for the Saddam regime.  The air War went on for 6 weeks until the ground war kicked off and whatever C3 nodes that survived the air war we blew up so they couldn't coordinate their ground forces when we crossed the berm.

This was me and my brother after the War was over.  We both were over there.

  The Iraqi's would throw SCUD missiles at us and the Israeli's to provoke the Israeli's into attacking  and fracturing the coalition against them.  It was a close thing, the Israeli's did launch a few times and Dick Cheney calling the PM of Israel and assuring them that we were doing everything possible to hunt them down.  After the war we found out that the SCUDs could be set up and launched in less than 30 minutes.  Much quicker than the original estimates that the Soviets had.   Our casualties were very low especially compared to the pasting the Iraqi's took.  I lost a couple of friends in this war and it was due to "Blue on Blue" which is called "Friendly Fire" but it was anything but friendly..The legality of the new generations of weapons exceeded the capability of "positive target Identification" which usually was "Mark 1 eyeball.  The United States hasn't operated large formation of troops and tanks since WWII and the weapons were far more lethal.

     I have Blogged a bit about Desert Storm from my experiences and what I have learned later on after the War.