The 1991 Gulf War a BBC production

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[Music] [Applause] amid the burning oil wells of Kuwait two armies faced each other on the edge of battle at stake the oil fields of the Middle East it was a war whose weaponry would give a glimpse of how men will fight in the 21st century a wall which would allow America to banish the ghosts of Vietnam and rediscover confidence in its military might [Music] a war which would curb an aggressive dictator with nuclear ambitions and a war which would do much to shape the world we live in this is its story [Music] [Music] eight weeks before plunging the Middle East into war Saddam Hussein welcomed his neighbor the Emir of Kuwait the elia ruled one of the richest countries on earth Kuwait had less than a million citizens but one-tenth of the world's oil Saddam was a big tater with ambitions for eight years he fought Iran now two years on he was using Iraq's huge oil revenues to develop nuclear weapons and equipped a million strong army he wanted to challenge Israel and dominate the Middle East but the British and American governments thought he was a dictator they could do business with weird Zod this man has fought a war against Iran for eight years during those eight years something like half a million young people have been killed half a million on both sides surely after that he can't go and have another military operation the idea that a Sunday afternoon or something I was gonna stroll into the Oval and go oh by the way mr. president Saddam Hussein is gonna mast a hundred thousand plus forces and is gonna walk into Kuwait and it's going to make this the 19th province of Iraq and this is going to be the major test of the post-cold war world that was too big it was too dramatic but that day in May 1990 Saddam was fighting to survive his military ambitions meant Iraq was living beyond its means [Music] the price of oil was plummeting the country would be bankrupt in three months Saddam blamed the MU the AMIA was flooding the market with cheap oil cheap oil meant bigger profits for the thousands of companies Kuwait owned in the West later when the day's business was over saddam summoned the arab leaders to a private meeting when the cameras left he warned the Emir to stop pushing down the price of oil he said each dollar less in price means to us one billion in revenues for a year if you do not mean waging a war against Iraq please stop it as economic collapse approached saddam used vast rallies to whip up opinion against Kuwait but the Emir took a tough stand Saddam and his inner circle scented a conspiracy to crush their regime before they could challenge Israel by the end of June we started to realize that there is a conspiracy against her a deliberate conspiracy against Iraq by Kuwait organized devised by the United States Saddam summoned the key men in his regime they decided unless Kuwait handed over ten billion dollars immediately Iraq would invade said I'm ordered the Republican Guard to move south towards the Rock's border with Kuwait these were the Iraqi Army's elite divisions equipped with modern Soviet tanks no other Middle Eastern country except Israel had forces to rival them soon on the border between Iraq and Kuwait 30,000 Iraqi troops had massed a travelling British diplomat saw them and told American military intelligence our first indication came from a human intelligence source a very reliable one who identified three Republican Guard divisions moving south toward Kuwait in Washington America's most senior soldier was soon inspecting pictures from a spy satellite and trying to piece together the Iraqi plan over the next few days over a relatively short period of time more and more information came forward that started to put these pieces in place artillery was coming forward Logistics units were being seen signals networks were coming up to the point that finally it could not be ignored and I called the general Schwartzkopf and said norm are you looking at what I'm looking at and he says yes it was only when we started to see this pattern of the type of forces that you would need to conduct an operation being grouped together geographically on the ground that it became very apparent that what you were seeing emerging was a military plan the news was passed to George Bush then in his second year as president satellite pictures couldn't tell him what Saddam intended but the president and his national security adviser Brent Scowcroft knew vital interests were at stake the notion of Iraq which was an aural powerhouse in itself acquiring the Kuwaiti resources and thus perhaps being able to dominate OPEC was a tremendous danger help was at hand with the crisis building one of America's closest allies in the Middle East had rushed to Baghdad once again the band played and the red carpet was rolled out the president of Egypt Hosny Mubarak had been sent by the Arab world to discover Saddam's plans it was an encounter that would have far-reaching consequences I met with Saddam Hussein he met me in the airport then he took me in the car he was driving this inside him nobody with us until we went one of the palaces near the lake there and we went upstairs the first floor get attacked in a big room and we were both alone nobody with us I asked him about see what's the problem what's happening I told do you have any intention to attack them with him he told me no but don't tell the quids of affect it was a very clear answer as soon as we left Iraq the Egyptian president telephoned the White House with the news that Saddam was bluffing Mubarak towed George Bush that the Iraqi leader was desperate for money but the Arabs could sort things out President Mubarak flew on to Kuwait the AMIA was desperate for news as soon as the two leaders were alone the Emir began to describe the pressure he was under it will be that Saddam Hussein asked me to give him ten billion dollars cash took me ahead I cannot bring 10 billion cash now anyway I told him what happened between me and Santa and even I told him there is no intention to attack wait as Saddam said but he told me don't tell him but I told him because they were terrified when we made general offers to the Kuwaitis of military support their response was stay away from us we can handle this we can handle this together with our Arab brothers the most we'll have to deal with his problems at the at the Arab League we'll negotiate this don't take actions that will provoke the Iraqis to do what we fear they might do the 30,000 troops on Kuwait's border became a hundred thousand but nothing was done for seven days an herb leaders insisted this was blocked in London and Washington politicians used to doing business with Saddam gave him the benefit of the doubt in Saudi Arabia on August the first the Iraqis walked out of talks saddam issued his orders with the Mohonasen a while after we gathered at 4 o'clock on the afternoon before the invasion I smile I'm an optic wait I remember there Matano on a map table will be shown our objectives in Kuwait then our captain explained the Kuwaiti government was about to change we've been asked to help set up the new government now in exile at that time general wafeek al summer I met Saddam almost daily he remembers said I'm double-checking his calculations kearney attempted the end narubu that Saddam thought any reprisals would be limited and would tail off with time region tourney I took the gun he believed that America's involvement in Vietnam had destroyed its willingness to use military power Vietnam had been an outright defeat hajima yeah America is he mercy SEO Oscar as they spoke a satellite took this photograph American intelligence analysts searched for the bases which had been crammed with hundreds of Iraqi tanks but when they found them the bases were empty tank tracks led towards Kuwait the Pentagon went to its highest alert level we issued watchcon one it was the first time the DIA since the system was established had gone to watchcon one because we wanted to make it very clear that this was a different condition the build-up was complete we would receive no more warning but the invasion was imminent I was essentially deputized to go back to the White House to meet with Scowcroft and the president and to convince them to take one shot at trying to influence Saddam and just as we were talking about what exactly he would say to Saddam in this last effort to get him to think twice before doing anything that's when the phone rang saying we just heard from our people in Kuwait shooting has started this war whatever it is has begun Republican Guard traffic started to seal off the city special forces were landed by helicopter on the beaches they advanced to seize key government buildings the AMIA had stood down his army to avoid provoking Saddam many Kuwaiti officers were abroad on their summer holidays I received a call from from a friend in the foreign ministry and he told me that the foreign minister said that now and stressed now is the time for the u.s. diet and I said to him there may have been a time to act yesterday there may be a time to act in the future but I don't know what we can do right now a few Kuwaiti units mounted a hasty defense of the Emir and his palace but Iraqi tanks soon overwhelmed them the Emir was driven away with minutes to spare the Emir and his bodyguard made for Saudi Arabia mingling with confused rush-hour traffic Iraqi intelligence had expected the Amyas capture and already anticipated how he would be dealt with a small miniature moon her Italian kalium is a poison that has a very strong impact on the nervous system it leads to death within one month of administration an EOD women yet then our healer it's what has happened many times to opposition figures well hostile Akaka the harlot kathira did you him our Allah by noon Saddam Hussein controlled one-fifth of the world's oil for us though shocking shocking I couldn't believe that this could happen in the Arab world Saddam Hussein we were very in good terms and he was a friend we know each other very well but didn't expect him to do that [Music] Sadam probably figured the Arab world and the world at large would bitch and moan for a couple of days and then people would get used to it and the world would essentially learn to live with it in the United States which had left Lebanon a decade before and so forth was not going to do anything and even if the United States wanted to do something the local Arabs would never do anything they would never work with the United States and stand up to Saddam so I think Saddam took the pretty intelligent decision that he could probably get away with it but we really needed some time to come to grips with this basic fundamental question of our strategic assessment of what this meant did it matter that he'd taken Kuwait to put it bluntly what we ultimately did sending half a million people around the world and all that that entailed that was too big of a thought for people at that first meeting even to think about so instead you had people talking all over the place many of whom were talking about how we could live with this the president left to give a speech in Aspen Colorado Brent Scowcroft traveled with him the president was way out in front of most of his advisors he felt the same way I did about it about the sort of resigned tone of the meaning and that there was no no sense of outrage or no sense of imperative but now Saddam Hussein and his first stroke of bad luck another leader was also in Aspen George Bush does said to me Omar what is your view and so indeed I told him that regresses must be stopped not only stopped but they must be thrown out an aggressor cannot gain from his aggression he must be thrown out and really by that time in my mind I thought we ought to throw him out so decisively that he could never think of doing it again the president said little to the press but he was already inclining on towards action Margaret Thatcher remembers telling him Saddam Hussein was a potential Hitler who had to be stopped it was talk that steeled the president's determination the president returned to Washington he led a country for whom the last war was not the war with Hitler but the quagmire of Vietnam nevertheless at the White House and later at Camp David the president and his advisors now met to take the first steps towards war the CIA director began with an electrifying warning over a hundred thousand Iraqi troops had found their way south of Kuwait City indicating yet another intention beyond the invasion of Kuwait either to terrorize Saudi Arabia or to actually invade it well one of the first questions was is he going to stop at the borders of Kuwait Saddam is he going to stop there or or is he likely to go on into Saudi Arabia and move down to the oil fields we had no idea what he was going to do everybody'd been dead wrong with respect to the question of whether or not he was going to invade Kuwait and he did invaded Kuwait and he had 140,000 Iraqi troops on the Saudi border the key decision that came out of that meeting is we will defend Saudi Arabia there was no debate about that the question I then posed is then what are we prepared should we be be prepared to go forward and fight for Kuwait the president made no response Vietnam had shaped : Powell Powell feared the military was again in danger of being trapped in an unpopular war in a faraway place so those of who were Vietnam veterans we all have a view that says if you're gonna put us into something then you owe the Armed Forces you owe the American people a clear statement of what political objective you're trying to achieve while Carolyn Powell left for Washington to organize troops to defend Saudi Arabia Brent Scowcroft stayed at Camp David with the president to persuade the Saudis to accept the troops the next afternoon the president returned to the White House the general still hoped talk of liberating Kuwait had gone away leaving America committed only to the defense of Saudi Arabia emotionally to come out so I went out there and he said what's going on what have we heard and what I essentially reported was that there had been zero progress this will not stand this will not stand this aggression against Kuwait on live television the generals watched the president commit the United States deliberating Kuwait I've got to go I have to go to work I gotta go to work I liked it I liked it very much others : Powell says that'll teach us to leave you up Camp David alone with him [Laughter] satellites now showed to Iraqi divisions on the Saudi border the CIA reported the Saudis were considering buying Saddam off if the Iraqis attacked Saudi Arabia's ports Saddam would control yet another fifth of the world's oil I asked the Saudi ambassador to come in and he said that the Saudis weren't at all sure they wanted to be helped by the United States and he cited a couple of examples where the United States had offered help and then demonstrated enormous weakness and he said frankly we're afraid you say you'll help and then the going will get tough and you'll pull out and we'll be left the president dispatched his Defense Secretary to Saudi Arabia Dick Cheney and his high-level delegation had to convince Saudi Arabia's rulers it might soon be another Kuwait they met with the king I told the King Fahd that they did not have the luxury of waiting until Saddam began an invasion of Saudi Arabia and then asked for our help because then it would be too late when norm shorts cough started laying out what we were prepared to send to Saudi Arabia beginning with two hundred thousand troops I just had the sense that Fahd was absolutely stunned at the end of that discussion the King turned and said ok and I almost fell out of my chair because I absolutely was sitting there thinking well you know this this is going to be well thank you very much for the information we'll let you know and the King said ok and and I think we all did a double-take and went back and said you know secretary Cheney said so you agree and the King said yes I agree we walked out of a meeting tonight to secretary Cheney I said sir I'm prepared to start the flow now do you want me to do that and secretary Cheney said yes and so I turned to Chuck and I said Chuck send them on their way [Music] the largest single movement of troops since world war ii began the president emphasized it was to defend Saudi Arabia not to liberate Kuwait the first American aircraft refueled above the Saudi desert Saddam Hussein had never expected to see forces from America the great ally of Israel operating from arid soil but the invasion had turned both Western and Arab governments against Iraq [Music] soon British French and Egyptian troops arrived the beginnings of a coalition of 30 countries it rocks intelligence chief warned it will began the rock would lose Saddam was furious missile had any up or less of them and none of us dared say withdraw from Kuwait none of us were lacking that Saddam said you're acting as if you're salesman for Western arms and Technology thought oh we doin any less if it's God's will victory will be ours - inshallah Saddam rounded up foreigners in Kuwait as hostages he hoped to intimidate the British and American public's but his encounter with seven-year-old Stuart Lockwood served only to inflame them Saddam brood Kuwait as he'd always ruled Iraq with terror the UN imposed sanctions and called on Saddam to withdraw instead he sent a third of a million soldiers into Kuwait Kuwait's wealth was systematically plundered [Music] at one hospital premature babies were left to die as soldiers looted incubators for Iraqi hospitals some Kuwaitis tried to fight back but after the car bombs came reprises they started killing Iraqi soldiers kidnapping them and killing them Saddam gave an order to attack any area from which a single shot was fired so that's what we did the fledgling resistance movement to assume broken the methods used allowed Bush to elevate the struggle into a model crusade summary executions routine torture Hitler revisited America will not stand aside the world will not allow the strong to swallow up the weak sanim hussein played his first visit to Kuwait George Bush had authorized the CIA to start recruiting Iraqi dissidents to overthrow him America's equivalent of the SAS Delta Force was on standby to go into Iraq and kidnap him but Saddam's security was too good President Bush moved closer to war he met Mikhail Gorbachev to ask the Soviet Union not to stand in the way if America went to war with Iraq Iraq was an old ally of the Soviet Union but Gorbachev agreed the Cold War had just ended gorbachev did not want to risk his relationship with america europe sure go area to state you said it's a multi this was a key meeting a country had been occupied at that point in history we had not been able to deal with that situation everything else we had worked for would have been null and void Neuer will have with pity chocolate so without the Soviet Union on board we never would have been able to marshal the international coalition that we were able to build up it just gave an a completely different dynamic to the whole effort instead of being an effort let's say by the United States and the United Kingdom to eject Iraq from Kuwait II was an effort by the entire international community but Gorbachev wasn't willing to write a blank check he added an important provider we desire a visa to sure toaster said we agreed with all the Security Council resolutions we would do everything possible to force Iraq to accept that more consciously amoenus we did not rule out the use of military force as a final resort but all of us must search for a political settlement to avoid war steals away near Debbie Steve's Kinder Bueno contradict the need to bind the Soviets into the coalition dominated American tactics during the first flashpoint to Iraqi tankers tried to sneak past 50 warships from 12 countries enforcing United Nations sanctions at the president's holiday home in Maine a crisis meeting from London mrs. Thatcher argued the tanker should be sunk but the president cited with the Soviet requests to backpedal the president decided that we would let the ships go and so he called Prime Minister Thatcher to tell her that and she says well George alright I'll the accede to this one but this is no time to go wobbly a week later King Hussein of Jordan came to seek British support for a face-saving deal for Saddam the king was an old ally of the West but he was also close to Saddam he feared a war would engulf Jordan mrs. Thatcher was implacable the dita started with my speaking to her of my views and my attempts at my frustrations of them she was very quiet for a long period of time and then she gave me responses he walked into a firestorm she flew at him she said that she thought he had calculated entirely wrongly he had made the wrong decision by encouraging Iran by appearing to support Iraq she gave him the toughest time I think he's ever had in his life I had to ask a question was it conceivable that she could be wrong look I was not discourteous I was firm very firm indeed but in Washington there was division the CIA like British intelligence reported sanctions might take five years to liberate Kuwait the president began to see war as inevitable but America's top General had grave misgivings : Powell went to the White House to explain how long-term sanctions might work I laid out for him what a sanctions policy might look like and how it would work he listened intently in that way he has somewhat slouched in his chair with his chin slightly down and his response was well : it's all very very interesting it's good to consider all options but I just don't think we're gonna have time for sanctions to work but even after this meeting Colin Powell would continue to argue against his presidents line two weeks later in the Pentagon Powell spoke with a top British commander Karen Powell said to me that he would be prepared to give sanctions a considerable time to work and I said well how long are we talking about Victor my astonishment Colin Powell said well I would give them up to two years to work he said I don't think we should learnt a military operation for at least that length of time if that's what it takes for sanctions to work which he was confident that they would because he felt there was a real risk of perhaps winning the war but losing the peace in the Middle East the president and his generals were on a collision course in the desert under appalling conditions were troops from America Britain France and the Arab coalition they couldn't stay indefinitely the president feared his coalition might collapse before Saddam's determination buckled he told the generals to brief him on how they would take back to wait it was an order that infuriated norman schwarzkopf the troops he commanded had been sent to defend Saudi Arabia wart scoff believed there weren't enough of them to storm Kuwait's defenses and defeat an army of occupation which outnumber them two to one he feared Bush's impatience might lead to military disaster great aren't they : called me and said I want you to send an offensive option back and I objected strongly I said look I've told everybody all along we do not have the forces on the ground to conduct an offensive option my view was well that's right you know it's a work in progress bring it bring it back to the United States let us brief it and we'll all see where we are only three days later Schwarzkopf chief planner Lieutenant Colonel Joe Purvis was sent to brief the president and his aides to Purvis it was obvious the best option was to outflank the Iraqi defenses but he and Schwarzkopf believed there were only enough troops to attack head on the computers predicted 10,000 casualties and my first question is why don't you go around to the west and the answer was well we don't have enough gas trucks we'll run out of gas when we're up there on the shoulder we can't do that it's not a feasible option and maybe something we don't know what kind of sand there is something but I mean I was pretty appalled the military were saying here's the way we'd have to do it in a manner that would suggest extraordinary a number of casualties in a and a large a large price to pay this was an effort however conscious or unconscious to basically say this is going to be a near run thing and the casualties are going to be very high and maybe we ought not do this I think that there was very little enthusiasm in the American military for in fact throwing Saddam out of Kuwait militarily I wasn't trying to frighten them I wanted to make sure they understood the significance of the operation we were thinking about this wasn't going to be just a simple walk in the woods drop a few bombs and they'll all go home the way the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Turks were telling my political colleagues and these were all gentlemen who had never really been in a major war and so what I was trying to do is make sure they understood what we were doing and the difficulties of what we were doing especially when it came to a ground patent plan and I think the ground plan is what scared them all to death that night there was a crisis of confidence at the heart of the administration the politicians wondered if the right generals were in command [Music] colin powell rushed to saudi arabia to meet Schwarzkopf they knew that back in Washington Dick Cheney was forming his own team to plan an offensive in case they dragged their feet Schwarzkopf laid out what he believed was needed if the president wanted war he asked power to support him when colon came over first briefly I pointed out all of my trepidations and the conclusion of that was : said okay if you are going to be required to attack you will have the forces that you need that was very reassuring to me colin powell returned to the white house it's a mr. president if you direct us to attack in order to eject the Iraqi army out of Kuwait this is how we're going to do it they asked for the seventh Corps the two heaviest divisions in the American army out of Europe which totally weakened NATO they asked for six carrier battle groups and then the political poison pill they asked for the activation of the National Guard and the Army Reserves the the force represented in these three requests was just awesome overwhelming not to mention the cost the president pushed his chair back said you have you've got it and if you need more come see me I left that meeting after that with a firm decision no question about it that sanctions had about three months left to produce a result and if they did if they did not produce the results in three months we were going to war I have today directed the Secretary of Defense to increase the size of US forces committed to Desert Shield to ensure that the Coalition has an adequate offensive military option should that be necessary to achieve our common goals [Music] the American army that would have fought World War three against the Soviet Union was on the moon a quarter of a million American troops headed for the Gulf Britain sent a further 20,000 Margaret Thatcher's last act as Prime Minister Bush had dragged his reluctant generals to the brink of war he had assembled international support nah he had to convince the American public and the Congress Bush's political opponents in the Congress began to send public opinion would not stand for war there was very little public support in the United States for the idea of going to war in the Persian Gulf some people never get the word defy didn't about oil the fight is about naked aggression that will not stand if we were gonna fight a war we had to do so with the support of the American people if possible with the support of the American Congress but that if we were going to send people Americans off to die in the Persian go if we had to be able to to survive the judgments of history that we didn't do so precipitously the United Nations gave Iraq six weeks to withdraw after that coalition forces would go to war in America opposition on the streets and in Congress intensified it looked like Vietnam all over again the morning after the UN decision the president risked an about-face to win the political battle to go the extra mile for peace I will issue an invitation to foreign minister Tariq Aziz to come to Washington I'm asking secretary Jim Baker to go to Baghdad to see Saddam Hussein the president had not consulted his allies they were furious it seemed to be entirely the wrong signal it seemed it went sort of give the Iraqis the impression that it could all be negotiated that anything was possible there was no need to withdraw just six days before the UN deadline for war and after many changes of plan James Baker prepared to meet Tariq Aziz the Americans needed the talks to win over public opinion and a hostile Congress but they fear the Iraqis might offer a deal that would split the coalition if there is a genuine sincere serious intention to make peace in the whole region of the Middle East we are ready to reciprocate when I went to meet with James Baker I hadn't the slightest idea that that meeting would succeed I knew that that was public relations that he wanted to tell the Congress look to the end I try to find the diplomatic settlement so that he couldn't get a few more votes Baker carried a letter from President Bush to the Iraqi leader demanding withdrawal and reminding Saddam that America had nuclear weapons the president's letter to Saddam Hussein which Tariq Aziz read in in Geneva made it very clear that if Iraq used weapons of mass destruction chemical weapons against United States forces that the American people would would demand vengeance and that we had the means to to achieve it I read it very carefully and then when I ended reading it I told him look mr. secretary this is not the kind of correspondence between two heads of state this is a letter of threat and I cannot receive from you a letter of threat to my president and I returned it to him in Washington the president and his team could only wait we basically said what if Saddam proposes this what if he proposes attempt a partial pullback what if he actually does a partial pullback and promises a complete pullback what we did was we must have gained out ten different Iraqi scenarios that we thought would test the coalition and I could never figure out why he didn't do it he could have he could have just given us fits and that was what I was worried about happening as a result of a meeting like this but in Geneva Tariq Aziz offered no last-minute compromise instead the talk had turned to war I said that they should not make the mistake of assuming that they would control the terms of the of the battle as perhaps they might have assumed in their war with Iran that this would be a totally different situation that our technological superiority was overwhelming and would be brought to bear my response was very cool I told him mr. secretary Iraq is a very ancient nation we have lived for 6,000 years I have no doubts that you are a very powerful nation I have no doubts that you have a very strong military machine and you will inflict on us heavy losses but Iraq will survive and this leadership will decide the future of Iraq and I was certain at the time that we would be going to war and going to war very very soon the talks had lasted over six hours across the world people waited expectantly to hear if there would be peace or war regrettably ladies and gentlemen in over six hours I heard nothing that suggested to me any Iraqi flexibility whatsoever even to this day I am stunned by Saddam's failure to exploit all of his options time and time again Saddam by opting for the maximum actually made it relatively I hate to use the word easy but made it much less difficult on the United States and the coalition to sustain itself and you know I'm not sure a time so much whether we want it but clearly he lost it [Music] now Congress began to debate whether to give authority for war something they'd never done over Vietnam no one knew how the vote would go for three days they debated everything hung in the balance if Bush lost but tried to go to war he'd risked impeachment on this vote the yeas are 52 and the nays are 47 we would not have wonderful without you we simply wouldn't in the aftermath of the Geneva meeting opposition to our use of force eroded so it was an idea that would that germinated with the president it was the right idea we did it right and there really should be no no second thoughts about that it worked exactly the way it should have worked President Bush had taken America and its allies to the eve of war the war would be fought to stop Saddam keeping control of 20% of the world's oil but Bush also believed this would be a just war against a dangerous dictator [Applause] president privately with the most inner circle made absolutely clear he was going to go forward with this action even if he were impeached the truth of the matter is that while public opinion and the voice of Congress was important to Bush I believe it had no impact on his decision about what he would do he was going to throw that son-of-a-bitch out of Kuwait regardless of whether the Congress of the public supported [Music] seven days after the Geneva peace talks stealth bombers left for Baghdad the Gulf War was about to begin [Music] [Music] in the final hours before the United Nations deadline to withdraw from Kuwait my dad prepared for war [Music] Saddam Hussein appeared on television to assure the Iraqi people victory would be there's talk of retreat was punished by death you are the new leader of the Arab world he was told saddam laid out his strategy the Americans and British he said relied too much on technology they never fight man-to-man they can never win the battle [Music] [Music] [Music] across America and Europe midnight vigils marked the passing of the deadline many feared a long and bloody war another quagmire like Vietnam that dawn the President signed the order that would take the coalition to war he was ordering people into situations where they would lose their lives and the kind of magnitude of that awful decision I think haunted him know how much is a life worth how much is a hundred lives worth a thousand ten thousand seventeen hundred coalition aircraft now prepared to attack [Music] they faced modern Meraki fighters hundreds of missile batteries and thousands of anti-aircraft some Pentagon estimates that suggested one in five aircraft in the first attack might be shot down [Music] the American air planners hoped the attacks would be precise and powerful enough to bring Iraq to its knees to begin with the army occupying Kuwait would hardly be touched instead strategic targets all over Iraq would be obliterated before the planes could attack a unit known as task force normally at a critical Road it's Apache helicopter crews had been training for months their mission to destroy at all costs to radar sites that could give Baghdad early warning of what was to come it was a moonless night eight Apache helicopters laden with Hellfire missiles took off towards Iraq this is a pilot's eye view video for one helicopters night-vision camera the gunships flew a few feet off the ground until there were eight months from the radar dishes we slowed our airspeed to about 40 knots came up on line all abreast so we're all the same distance for the target and at this point I'm not looking through my goggles I'm looking at a TV screen right in front of me watch the clock tick to zero I gave the code word get some at that point everybody fired their Hellfires out of the probably 150 people that we were briefed we're at the site I would imagine not more than 10 or 20 probably lived through that engagement off the coast the US Navy prepared to launch dozens of cruise missiles but the missiles couldn't navigate over featureless desert so they were secretly programmed to fly over the mountains of Iran and then turned towards Baghdad [Music] the Iranians had no idea of any of us the Navy come on prayed nothing would go wrong we were dealing with neighboring countries who we didn't want to join into the fray we'd never used him in conflict before and there was a lot of apprehension about do we launch these scenes and then they make up their own mind where they're going [Music] in Baghdad the guns began to fire [Music] ten stealth bombers were minutes away they were designed to be invisible to radar but as insurance the US Air Force started to jam Baghdad's radar the jamming gave the game away the defenders radar screens were blinded but 3,000 anti-aircraft guns and 60 missile batteries fired wildly into the sky [Music] mr. Scottie Katara - Howie bad night orders came from headquarters too far back any way we could even if it meant closing our eyes and firing into the sky that's the idea it was so dark and the aircraft were coming so quickly and we didn't have the capability to aim accurately that's why they told us put up a barrage of fire any way you can it has young child to have got in the approaching stealth bombers the pilots saw the firestorm of shells and missiles exploding above the city they flew straight towards it what we wanted to do was sever his ability to communicate with his frontline forces and if that meant killing him then so be it CNN journalists gave a running commentary to the outside world six minutes after the stealth bombers left the cruise missiles arrived some destroyed government buildings others dropped carbon filament to short the electrical grid system [Music] with the initial attacks complete an armada of coalition aircraft headed for targets all over Iraq hundreds of planes took to the air despite the initial successes scores were expected not to return as the battle unfolded norman schwarzkopf sent a message to his troops soldiers sailors airmen and Marines this morning at zero 300 we launched Operation Desert Storm my confidence in you is totally our cause is just now you must be the thunder and lightning of Desert Storm planes were in the air at that time heading towards their targets with with no guarantees of the outcome to know that we had taken a very big step and and that the war had started and none of us knew exactly how it was going to end that's a very very emotional moment with key air defense headquarters destroyed Iraqi fighters couldn't operate only a few managed to struggle into the air kind of fighter aircraft had orders to attack but who radar was blanked the first Iraqi fighter at the war was shot down I see that somebody's targeted on me it's an Iraqi fighter who wants to target me and shoot me down so I remember firing a missile I remember seeing this big blue flame coming across the sky three to five seconds long and I remember seeing it and and then it goes away I remember thinking to myself that that my missile hit him and that the targets destroyed and that he's down or what's ahead AWACS plays Boeing 707 is packed with computer equipment helped control the battle the coalition Armada systematically attacked Iraq's war machine the factories that made chemical and biological weapons the scud missile plants in all that night over 200 different targets were hit first 24 hours consisted of more attacks in the master attack plan then the entire number of targets that were targeted in the years 1942 in 1943 during the combined bomber offensive in Europe that night marked a new point in warfare precision bombing have become a reality only one allied pilot was killed at the White House the politicians were euphoric the first night of the war everybody was you know in heaven they saw these strikes go in very successfully casualties were almost nil television pictures of bombs going down chimney stacks and all that sort of stuff and some of the reporters were running around saying that's going to be over right away and I had to call down to the Pentagon press office and tell them to shut those guys up we've just started the war it isn't it isn't a one day affair yeah it's not going to be over before the next commercial break just before dawn the RAF attacked an airbase near Basra Iraq second city lacking American technology for years the RAF had trained to surprise the enemy by flying low and fast it was not attack ting they'd had the chance to use on a modern battlefield out there it was burning blue I mean it was from the 8 o'clock in the morning at 8:30 and it was blue sky and the visibility was a thousand miles we were flying at maybe 60 or 70 feet in about 5 or 600 miles an hour and there's this huge explosion and a flash and the aircraft we was hit by a missile well had blue above my head sunny the desert was above my head and it was just tumbling I couldn't see the back of the aircraft all it was was a ball of fire and the fire was spreading its way down the spine of the aircraft towards me and then you say this aircraft is going no further and you give me the ejection drills you know it's actually half a second between pulling the handle and being thrown clear of the aircraft and not half a seconds like a lifetime and then it's as if someone a huge giant just grabs you by the shoulder yangshin I remember a head game forward and then as the crack is the canopy opens and you're left in your parachute and it's deathly silent and there we were about to land in the in the desert in error and then you realize how big the desert is and how clear the skies we'd gone from these modern-day Knights on our high-tech charges flashing around the sky in 20 million pounds with the technology and suddenly there we were you know two very sad pink bodies in the desert then after about three hours we saw some Iraqis coming towards us and shot started a ring out and they were shooting at a store trying to kill us and we were down low and I remember John looking at him here as we're down and going should we go out with a bang and I don't know why I just said no there's always hope Saddam Hussein was moving between safe houses in the suburbs the bombing have been destructive but hadn't inflicted the civilian deaths Saddam had judged without rage world opinion his former intelligence chief says when he briefs said I'm on the situation his temper flared an out of say you don't matter I said I know that Iraq will be destroyed I'm telling you the truth Saddam said these Americans are technicians not soldiers who fight well as deham they have technology on their side but that won't help them win Saddam had already planned where to strike back that morning when he met his ministers he ordered action he believed would shatter the coalition of Western and Arab countries attacking Iraq mobile launchers hidden in the desert fired Scud missiles at Israel we had the capability we did it when you are attacked by an enemy or attack your enemies that's natural the scuds were fired indiscriminately at Israel's largest city saddam judged the Israelis with retaliate and joined the conflict the Arabs in the coalition would then refuse to fight alongside Israel the coalition would collapse and so with the war soon more Scouts were on the way Israel's nuclear forces now went on full alert 60 Israeli Jets took to the skies early warning radar appeared to show Iraqi bombers heading for Israel the American defense secretary picked up the hotline to Tel Aviv Israeli retaliation seemed inevitable you imagine an American president sitting quietly as missiles land on the United States saying no we're not going to do anything that's an unacceptable political position for any government the Israeli army reported nerve gas in the debris of one of the missiles Israelis prepared for the worst we knew we had a real problem at this point because if Israel got into the war this was a real break for Saddam if he provoked the Israelis into attacking him then the chances of holding the coalition together really became problematical I must say this is the darnest way to can conduct an interview ultimately none of the eight scuds that landed that night proved to have chemical warheads after some discussion Baghdad had decided the Israelis might retaliate against a chemical attack with nuclear weapons actions that are necessary to remove it a kid bein this man min of sorry Scott Gannon some of the Scud missiles were loaded with chemical warheads but they weren't used they were kept hidden throughout the war they'll have several we didn't use them because the other side had a deterrent force led a powerful magnet the man who decided what happened next was Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir he and George Bush disliked each other but now Bush telephoned him an angry Amir told the president if America couldn't stop the Scots the Israeli Air Force would Bush said to Samir pleaded with Samir try to cajole Samir that is you'll not take any military action that this would be injurious to the cause of the Allied cause that in the final analysis this would also be injurious to Israel's cause I think he's such situations you have not to play with words it's not it couldn't be a moment of diplomatic discussions and debates I explained to him it's very difficult mr. president it's very difficult I don't know what did they often all who blink but in this moment we will act accordingly in a calling accordingly with your concepts Israel became the president's top priority we were going to be redoubling our efforts and the darndest search-and-destroy effort that's ever been undertaken in that left out in that area and I hope that that is very reassuring to the citizens of Israel but Norman Schwarzkopf believed the Air Force should concentrate on winning the war not placate in the Israelis he was furious at Washington's interference he called them pointy headed politicians who had never fought them fought their way out of a wet paper bag from my perspective from a strategic perspective in the president's perspective and obviously I was doing this with the president's approval was it was vital to keep the Israelis out of the conflict and that the way you did that was to make certain that they knew we were doing everything humanly possible to deal with that Scud surrett Chaney overruled Schwarzkopf aircraft started to crisscross twenty-eight thousand square miles of desert hunting for perhaps fourteen mobile Scud launchers they couldn't find them neither could they find the convoys bringing supplies of fresh missiles Scot Opaka I had yeah cuckoo bass chicken koala he now had they used to transport the Scots to us and civilian buses secondary Naboo well it's up can't you Donna they take out all the seats and slide a missile in through the back give us our wagon cathica hot in Bomont affair even if the bus was spotted by an enemy plane the pilot would assume it was just full of passengers no pothana hadn't my Fabian pasta dish but there was another way to hunt Scots SAS columns were fighting deep inside Iraq Schwarzkopf distrusted special forces but five days before the SAS commander had persuaded him to make an exception there had to be people on the ground that human I cannot be replaced by technology we were well-armed we had good strength we above all at the desert as our friend to retreat and hide into we were told in very categoric terms our priorities want the 10 worst skirt skirt and nothing but skirt for 43 days the SAS patrolled the Iraqi desert closest to Israel they called it the Scud box this is the only film of an essayist column it was taken by the gun camera on an American helicopter flying in to take back a prisoner within two days of the SAS arriving there were no more launches from the Scott box columns like this caused mayhem destroying radar sites microwave towers and cutting communication cables and when they saw Scud convoys they attacked them America had rushed Patriot missiles to Israel and Saudi Arabia to shoot down Scots in the skies above tel-aviv and Riyadh they dueled with the incoming missiles the Patriots got as close as they could and detonate filling the air with shrapnel in Israel the Patriot became a symbol of resistance damping down the pressure for Israel to join the war Patriot is 41 4 42 42 scuds engaged 41 intercepting I view it as an honor to be here to come to Raytheon the home of the men and women who built the Scud Busters where but the Pentagon was claiming a kill every time a patriot exploded near ascot senior British intelligence officers didn't believe the figures and neither did the Israelis on the ground in Tel Aviv the Israeli military analyzed the damage every time as cod fell to earth what they concluded was kept top secret so as not to give comfort to Saddam Hussein when I met President Bush in Washington don't read out to some of you an argument because he was convinced that pages doing a great job I told him that at the very best the the the intercept ratio maybe was 20% inseparable he asked me what I meant by that 'no sir that may be out of every ten squads patriots strategist up they might succeed in the two but in retrospect I was overstating the case I think they're probably not a single Scud was intercepted by Patriot the Patriots struggled to react to Scud missiles traveling at six times the speed of sound the myth of the patriot helped keep Israel out of the war but most of the Scud warheads got through only after the ward at the Pentagon acknowledged the Patriots limitations Patriot was an air defense system designed to shoot down aircraft not missiles Yin what I remind everybody all my friends and in the United States you think we've got defenses against missiles we don't tel Aviv was targeted by Scud missiles fired from western Iraq fresh missiles were brought to the launchers along these desert roads SAS men hit along them one eight-man patrol was codenamed Bravo two zero brought his eros tasked to insert into Iraq some 300 kilometres by helicopter to set an observation post up in the hope of seeing Mobile's good launches driving past and then communicate back to base and call in coalition aircraft the main supply route wasn't a tarmac road it was a track system and as a look northeast there were two s60 and aircraft guns we got enemy right on top of us there was about mid-afternoon on the second day and we started here goats coming from the north and then we heard the young boy start to come along and shout his goats and his eyes come up like saucers we knew there was something wrong and straightaway just went running off towards the any aircraft guns just screaming and shouting we packed all our equipment up and started to move out of the body within half an hour we were engaged by a local militia force and a firefight ensued we first heard that Bravo two zero was in trouble when he got a garbled radio message we really didn't know what has gone wrong we launched our helicopters and as it turned out we were looking further south than they actually were the patrol had become scattered McNab led one group of five men it started snowing it was plain to see if the weather don't kill us the enemy will and we were continuously again compromised by these goats the whole land was covered with people herding goats so I made the decision that we're gonna hijack a vehicle that night and go for the border McNab and the four men with him did just that but close to the border in a series of gun battles two died the others were hunted down I decided to hide in a drainage culvert about four kilometres from the Syrian border I have no idea what happened but it was just chaotic sort of shooting so I know I was in a shit as I was pulled out I was the first time I've been out in daylight beautiful sunny day and you could see Syria you see the high ground of Syria which was severely pissed me off because he was so close you could literally taste it you know and that was a I was captured meanwhile the other three patrol members had started walking to Syria the cold killed one man another was captured the third reached the border it was night I started to move around the edge of a building a guy came out about 200 meters away he saw me I hid behind a command two guys started to walk down I could possibly profit by letting them walk past me as it was they came right on top of me I took the first guy out with a knife the second guy started run I caught up with him and we grappled on the floor and he ended up with a broken neck on the last night when I started to collapse I knew I was getting very very close to dying at that point I knew I had to get water there was a go Tara's house I staggered up there a young guy came out and greeted me I asked if this was Iraq he then said Syria he pointed back and showed me where Iraq was and assured me that I was safe the bombing of Iraq continued the RAF was having a difficult war in these early days its losses accounted for a quarter of the coalition's total casualties the crews life expectancy could be measured in weeks whatever reasons may be given after the war the reason those aircraft crashed was because we were flying low level for one reason or now that may have been they flew into ground maybe they were hit by traffic maybe they were avoiding that but they were flying their level and so one said well is this necessary is this a sensible thing to do and the answer was no it isn't necessary and it's not a sensible thing to do and I didn't want to go on doing it the American command admired the men but would you be us about the tactics they would happily have cancelled missions against airfields the Iraqis were not even attempting to use the crews also suggested a change of tactics but it didn't happen it was going to impact on the whole of the arias strategy and put it into question and as a result of that there was a great reluctance in emod for two trains and we were allowed to change it the commanders on spot were not good were forbidden to change it has gone through here and has gone through the top of the wing only after another tornado was lost and with sharp questions being asked by the Americans did the low-level attacks stop I think it was quite disgraceful interference by the Ministry of Defence in the tactics not not the policy not the strategy of the war the tactics of running at war [Applause] aging Buccaneer Jets the aircraft at Toledo is meant to replace rush to the Gulf they're carried equipment to laser designate targets from higher altitudes that was an excellent splash soon they were working in tandem with tornadoes dropping laser-guided bombs a week into the wall the air planners still believe by bombing Iraq they could deliver a decisive victory [Music] much of Iraq's air force had been destroyed on the ground the coalition controlled the skies it could bomb at will bridges power plants communications all were destroyed [Music] but Saddam did not withdraw from Kuwait he was determined to sit the bombing out Korea given me an no matter you would say it's no problem we can rebuild everything even the morale of the people we know yet you could sense the the angst ananza and anxiety and unease throughout the American body politic gosh it's been going on for a week why isn't it over maybe it's not going well what are we trying to do and we had not been sort of on stage to explain we were trying to do so I went up to see secretary Cheney and said to the secretary you know we've got to do something because this is you know we're starting to lose the public on this one secretary Cheney and general Powell are here too the fear the American public might turn against the military as they had over Vietnam influence Powell's thinking throughout the war and public relations was the wars second front as a measure of effectiveness of how we're doing in the air campaign I just pull these two things out I've laundered them so you can't really tell what I'm talking about because I don't want the Iraqis to know what I'm talking about but trust me trust me officialy Saddam was not a target but the Allies launched 260 missions against sites where they thought he might be hiding eventually spies reported Saddam slept in private houses changing location every night you can find out perhaps where he has been you can find out even where he is but what you need to know is where he's going to be because you must mount an attack and so it's almost a an impossible task permethrin you might find it strange but the President of the Republic of Iraq was sometimes driven around the city in an old taxi taxi oedema it's strange but true that Saddam also used a lorry to move around the city we say our Ataman lorry other these are some of the measures he resorted to the Air Force kept searching these pictures prompted some of the more improbable missions of the war Saddam was inside an American motor home known as a Winnebago when we saw him sitting in a Winnebago we went after the Winnebagos with a vengeance and whenever we saw one or tried to find one and we saw one or two or three we would we would attack them as quickly as we possibly could Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait opened a pipeline flooding the Gulf with oil the aim was to destroy the desalination plants that provided Saudi Arabia with drinking water Saddam wanted to provoke an early land war and inflict casualties to undermine Western resolve the desalination plants continued to work and a bombing raid cut the flow of oil if the Iraqis wanted a ground war they would have to attack Saddam ordered his forces to move on the abandoned Saudi border town of Khafji whatever fuck them as CEO Lee that bubble Saddam said capture four or five thousand American British and French troops when I should the home in our home I'll use them as human shields baba bhot will tie them to our tanks and overrun the saudi oil wells if you hadn't had that is sofia patil and if we do this the allied jets won't attack that even the US Marine sent an unmanned spy plane on a routine flight over Iraqi positions in southern Kuwait [Applause] it beamed back television pictures to a truck at the launch site [Music] what do we have here crow let's see what they are there's a sultan the Iraqi attack on Kochi had begun the town was undefended it had been evacuated on the first day of the war after the Iraqis showed it [Applause] in the control vehicle Marine helicopter pilots awaited orders to attack that the orders never came we'd been on the landline vector our wing headquarters let him know what was going on we started you know I'm a nun once some scenarios began running through our minds on you know why in the world would they not be letting us launch on these vehicles guess what twenty-two hundred and fifty three hours they've crossed the war on King Fahd is gonna be pissed five babies gonna be pissed it's gonna be hot for an hour and a half the Marines watched the Iraqis advance back at the Air Force Headquarters the war had settled into a routine that routine didn't include an Iraqi attack fricking bomber couldn't ask for any better target than that why was the Iraqi advance not stopped prior to coughs gee a very straightforward simple question deserves a very straightforward simple answer it was not the Air Force's best day the Iraqis occupied Khafji they did not no US Marines had hidden in the town one of the six-man reconnaissance teams was headed by Chuck Ingram Laurence lens commanded the other I got the team together and I said we've been practicing for some of us five years to play in the big game and now here we all sudden get a chance I think we ought to stay and they agreed you're the only people there yourself and another team of your buddies somewhere else in the city and you know that that's it the point of no return I lost the downrange take that bad boy out back dad announced a great victory but by dawn the next day American artillery was in position the Marines inside Khafji gave precise radio instructions telling the guns where to fire when I finally got artillery fire it was the best feeling in the world everything we called in was what we call Danger Close which simply means that it's so close that the round could actually hit us instead of the enemy at every moment the Marines in the town expected to be discovered Rockies came very close to capturing us they were inside of our building for at least a day you could see their heads down there and if you wanted to you could spit on them two days later Saudi forces formed up to retake their town the attack would cost them 19 dead perhaps a hundred Iraqis died in the town meanwhile airstrikes destroyed two Iraqi divisions desperately trying to reach Khafji for months Saddam had proclaimed fighting on the ground would bleed the coalition and undermine its resolve but the attempt to reinforce Khafji was a bitter lesson in what air power could do to an army that surrendered control of the air come up with me in the ha'la'tha Minotaur taur well that Saddam became tense and anxious although he tried to conceal it how will a father can see how he was Restless Terra Firma it wasn't so much that he cared about the casualties but they exasperated him [Music] the attacks on Baghdad continued stealth bombers by night cruise missiles by day [Music] the missiles used the hotel where foreign journalists stayed as a final position check before heading for their targets coalition prisoners were now held in Baghdad this character came in looking at my teeth you knew that something was gonna happen but you again you were hoping that maybe it wasn't it was maybe some stupid you know they're doing it for a laugh but there's nothing you can do and in fact what he done he got a Leica pliers or a pincers or whatever they were and he took the back core of the tooth fell I was struggling I was screaming and it was this is a demonstration of what we can do do you really think we're gonna help you you know we can just let you die there's no problems with us they just yanked me up and just karate-chopped for one kind of felt like here the the boot just into money I collapse again they just pulled me up smack pull me up smack pull me up smack pull out spare and eventually and somewhere in there whilst to join that they say are you pilot or navigator are you part of an adventure pilot then it just came out I couldn't I can stop it and that's when you realize you've broken to the vines you feel a desperate sense of failure that you've let everyone down Hannah do you have a message I thought everyone thought I was a traitor and that everyone would see that I'd failed and that that was the last image my phone he was going to see of me I love you this already somebody came up and he said we're going to execute you or you can go on TV and it was a stark choice if you know make the broadcast all be killed it should be stopped so we can go home I do not agree on this wall and that was I think the ultimate shame everything that had gone before paled in insignificance about sitting in front of a TV camera and decrying your country for want of a better expression I'm now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq on this particular day keep your eye on the crosshairs right there look at here right through the crosshairs coalition superiority was overwhelming but the airmen were running out of targets and now in his rear view mirror late in January we came to the lower part of the list and one of those targets that we hadn't been able to get to before because it wasn't high priority was a bunker in the Alfreda serie of baghdad two stealth bombers would eventually assign to attack this target days before a spy in baghdad had reported iraqi intelligence was using the bunker the bunker was a public air raid shelter 204 people many women and children had died the shelters were the only places with running water and electricity so each night families gathered in [Music] it was pretty far down the list of command control sites near the bottom and in fact I recall when Buster and I were in the car driving down to our evening meeting with general Schwarzkopf where we'd go over the targets we were gonna hit two days handsome he and I talked about it and we kind of concluded that we're getting into sort of the marginal targets in the Baghdad area we wondered momentarily if in fact there was some sort of a propaganda ploy these people were Kurds so I was saying it murdered and and put in there things like that but it was obvious that in fact it was being used as an air-raid shoulder if the Allies had known about the civilians the shelter would not have been bombed but the Pentagon has always insisted the Iraqi intelligence service that monitored dissidents also used the building Baghdad denies this wafak al samurai says he visited the shelter had that kind of manly uh NASA part of the shelter was used by the intelligence service Mahabharat there were different groups but mostly they were people from what was called the technical affairs department they would often go in and out of the bunker on one occasion Saddam himself went there damaged major Sharon the Alfred Oh bunker hit gave us a major public relations and political problem I mean it stopped everything we were doing for about a day and a half while we paid our attention to that and so after that I called general Schwarzkopf we talked about it I said norm clearly we did what we thought was right but it turned out to be full of civilians we've got a look at the target list a little more closely and we got to take a look at what it is we're doing in Baghdad itself we didn't shut down all targets in Baghdad but I asked questions like why are we bombing the bath party headquarters for the 8th time do we think there is somebody still in the bath party headquarters why are we bouncing rubble with million-dollar missiles the bombing campaign had crippled Iraq but Saddam was still in power and his troops still in Kuwait it was clear that air power alone could not win the war how much more hitting of strategic targets in Baghdad would have called Sodom Hussein to move his forces out of the desert let's get real ultimately if you want or gain Kuwait back and if you want to do what the United Nations charged us to do you got to go on the ground and take it back on the ground half a million American British French and Arab troops moved to their final positions the ground-attack to liberate Kuwait would begin in 11 days a ferocious air campaign was still paving the way for the liberation of Kuwait that night's target was an intelligence headquarters the Allies didn't realize British prisoners were incited despite the destruction saddam hussein was defiant to liberate Kuwait the Allies would have to attack on the ground the president said now : you know we're really sure that air power alone can't do it and my response was mr. president I wish to God that I can assure you that air power alone could do it but you can't take that chance [Music] [Music] now all eyes were on norman schwarzkopf in the days before the ground attack he was haunted by the fear of massive casualties Schwarzkopf was under pressure his explosions of temper were common knowledge working with norms for takeoff the sorta like watching a thermometer the blood would start around the shirt collar and then it would work its way up to the jawline and then to the years and by the time it got to the ears you ought to watch out I would say that working for general Schwarzkopf was a privilege and an honor but there were many times when if someone had asked me if I would rather have been in that war room or in a dental chair having a root canal without anesthesia I probably would have chosen the dental chair Schwarzkopf staff feared him the British watched in amazement Norman going ballistic put people off their jobs and took her eye off the ball but on the outside he was a brilliant military strategist with a lot of experience he was understood the Arabs in the Arab world and he was a great diplomat and was able to bring nations along and that foreign armies along in a way that a lesser man would not have been able to when human lives are on the line you cannot be cavalier you can't do enough you cannot do enough you must must do everything you possibly can and leave no stone unturned and you can't settle you can never settle for second-best or a second class solution when you're dealing with enterprises of such magnitude that they involve the lives of literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people Cullen Powell and the American defense secretary Dick Cheney flew in to check the plans Schwarzkopf said he'd attack in two weeks not before dick Blake norm respected norm had confidence in norm but every every now and then dick reflected on the fact that this was a very important operation it was for all the marbles as we say and norm was known to be volatile norm was known to be also reluctant I I sort of get the tag for being the reluctant warrior but you won't find many of my military colleagues who were anxious to race into this before we were ready to race into it despite the bombing of Iraq Saddam Hussein still had 400,000 troops around Kuwait behind a barrier of minefields trenches and barbed wire he believed he and his generals could force a bloody stalemate if allied troops attacked these defenses and that the lesson of Vietnam was America would not tolerate heavy casualties Saddam thought the American troops were not prepared for the experience of battle and that Vietnam had traumatized the American administration can athon see until a dar al-eman Rekia Schwarzkopf was worried he was relying on b-52s from the Vietnam era to destroy the Iraqi forces dug in around Kuwait they dropped 72,000 bombs most fell on empty desert a mistake in the programming of the b-52s navigation system was discovered even then high wind still blew most bombs of course [Music] we thought that we would destroy tanks somewhere between the twenty and thirty a day and we weren't coming anywhere close we were down in the area six or eight and so after about ten days of that I knew that we had to do something different Dhalsim now sent to f-111 jets on a mission that would have far-reaching consequences ready finale when they reached the Iraqi front Lionel's the crews saw that even the best camouflage tank showed up as a white rectangle on their heat detecting cameras the tanks had grown hot in the daytime Sun unlike the b-52 MERS the f-111s carried laser-guided bombs one by one hundreds of tanks were picked off under the constant bombing the Iraqi army began to disintegrate the Allies didn't realize but some 200,000 Iraqi soldiers deserted I thought can it it had a devastating effect let me give him an example we inspected one infantry division what that Mossad yeah there should have been 15,000 soldiers in that division but we found only 34 there was no one left fuck em either neccessity Underwood a specific 34 out of 15,000 S Curl in Powell and Dick Cheney returned from their visit to Schwarzkopf they told an impatient George Bush the Allied troops could attack in two weeks Bush was anxious the date didn't slip Moscow support crucial to the coalition was weakening earlier that day the Soviets had suggested postponing the attack to allow ago she ations we are not going to suit somebody else's timetable whether it lives in Baghdad or anyplace else when the war cabinet met to inspect the plan of attack the presidency patience was tempered with a stock warning the fighting on the ground would be bloodier than he expected : made a very eloquent statement warning everybody it was going to be a lot uglier and a lot messier than they thought the battle would not go as the plans said and that he had an obligation to warn the president about casualties that there were unpredictable circumstances in war and that once it started the president was no longer in control but the president's impatience was justified on Gorbachev's orders a high-ranking soviet diplomat traveled to Baghdad Evgeny prima coughs mission was to urge Saddam Hussein to accept a face-saving deal after inspecting the damage prima cough was taken to a government guest house in central Baghdad [Music] Sushil he came in wearing a long trench coat it was cold there was an electric stove on them when we were left alone I told him I'm not a military expert but if a land offensive begins your troops in Kuwait will be wiped out you have a great burden of responsibility then he said for the first time quite directly okay I'm going to withdraw my troops from Kuwait I just want to be sure that as I retreat they don't shoot me in the back 48 hours before the ground attack was due Iraq's foreign minister Tariq Aziz arrived in Moscow Saddam's admission that he was willing to withdraw had led to frantic Soviet diplomacy to save their old ally from defeat Aziz went straight to the Kremlin the Soviet president was waiting as he's told Gorbachev he wouldn't accept the UN resolutions that call for Iraq to recognize Kuwait's independence and pay compensation but he said Iraq would withdraw from Kuwait Gorbachev thought that was good enough he telephoned Washington we kept coming back to him and saying no you continually are suggesting approaches which do not require an unconditional withdrawal and we were never never never never going to accept a negotiating down from the UN resolutions nevertheless the president summoned his key advisors to a critical meeting an offer was what they'd always wanted an Iraqi withdrawal without the need for a bloody land war but Saddam would walk away unpunished and undefeated at dawn the president called Gorbachev to tell him the deal was unacceptable the president just said no I'm sorry you know he said he's had all the chances he's had months he's had from August 2nd we have given him every opportunity and we've told him that this aggression would not stand and now it's too late borsch could have said okay let us have a ceasefire and then discuss the other matters he did not accept the ceasefire he continued the war according to his own schedule he didn't care about what Gorbachev said and reached with me he had the schedule the Coalition was under strain the French president Francois metre all cold demanding more time for diplomacy but then Saddam Hussein intervened we received word that Saddam had blown the oil wells and I went rushing up to the Oval Office and Bush used it right then in the telephone call with me or on sort of Francois we've just received this piece of information that shows that we cannot delay that that Saddam is going to produce some catastrophe in in Kuwait he's already set all the oil wells on fire and god knows what he may do next and that pretty well resolved that issue [Music] two armies faced each other on the edge of battle the Coalition will give sattim hussein until noon Saturday to do what he must do begin his immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait [Music] hundreds of oil wells blazed across Kuwait Saddam Hussein was destroying what he could not keep ignored George Bush's ultimatum obeying it would have humiliated him in the eyes of the Arab world [Music] I have therefore directed general Norman Schwarzkopf to use all forces available to eject the Iraqi army from Kuwait [Music] Schwarzkopf planned for the US Marines to attack first straight into Kuwait he hoped this would convince the elite Republican Guard to move south to counter-attack then 400 miles to the west French and American airborne troops would begin encircling the battlefield Arab armies would support the attack into Kuwait 24 hours after the initial assault the heavy armor of the American and British armies would smash through the Iraqi frontline and attack through the lightly defended Western Desert I always thought that there was a reason why they left the West open and that this was a would be a place where they would lay down a biological attack whether it be anthrax or whether it be botulism and I had my intelligence staff using terms like chemical killing sac nuclear detonation area and this sort of thing to describe possible scenarios as to why that area was left open I would rake wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweat just thinking about would they use him would they use them in the area out west where where there was not a lot of troops and and we thought there must be a reason for that Schwartz cop's plan meant Walt boomer the commander of the US Marines would be the first to lead his men into action despite the air war boomer feared storming the minefields and barbed wire of southern Kuwait would be a murderous affair fought under a barrage of Iraqi chemicals and nerve gas we're outnumbered when we attack into Kuwait sometimes people have lost sight of that but in addition to being outnumbered there was this overriding concern overwhelming concern about chemical warfare this just occupied most of my waking moments beneath smoke from the burning oil wells the assault units pulled on the clumsy charcoal line suits that might save their lives in a chemical bombardment marine engineers began to crawl through the miles of minefields bunker complexes and barbed wire that protected the Iraqi frontline as they advanced they used fiberglass rods to probe for mines so they could mark out safe paths for the first troops to race through you see mines everywhere you can look left and right and you see mines half buried mines full view mines just as far as you can see you look left and right and there's desert and there's just lines and lines and lines and groups of mines out there we crawled low crawled which is on your belly probing along with the fiberglass rods 70 meters in front of you Iraqis Marine snipers are behind us trying to suppress Iraqis that are moving through the trench lines you hear artillery mortars small-arms constantly under fire Restivo carved paths through two minefields blocking the main attack [Music] meanwhile 17,000 marines headed for the beaches of kuwait city two weeks before a landing had been on the cards but the defenses were so strong the marines would have been cut to pieces now Schwarzkopf wanted to convince the Iraqis an amphibious assault was imminent to reinforce the deception lieutenant Tom Dietz was ordered to plant bombs on a beach close to the city so its defenders would think a landing zone was being cleared the 16-inch guns of the battleship Missouri shelled the beaches to complete the deception the Missouri had fought in World War two many of its shells were made in the 30s within months the last battleships would be decommissioned and the shells sent to museums but the bombardment achieved its purpose Iraqi troops moved to the coast and away from the point where the Marines would attack firstly envisions will cross West via whopper of kids Oh 0 480 hour in the desert the marine commanders rehearsed their plans for the last time they expected a tough fight while I remain a provide some of that capability I'm also compass that we can walk through that we can work [Music] the attack began they don't think anyone particularly that the Marines would get much farther than maybe five kilometers at the very most maybe eight and that then with the enormous overwhelming forces that were arrayed in that area they it would stop the Marines database but by door the generals realized something remarkable that happened the Marine columns were driving through the enemy positions serenaded by non speakers playing the marine hymn Iraqi fighting position while Allied aircraft watched for a counter-attack thousands of Marines poured into Kuwait almost unopposed we expected casualties somewhere in the 25 to 30 percent range but there was sin ciolino firefights essentially no battles the Iraqis were there but they chose and they elected not to fight in many respects they could retreat and they could surrender much faster than we could attack or advance and that the the war really became a war of collection of enemy prisoners of war six weeks of relentless attacks from Allied aircraft had convinced the Iraqi constructs in the frontline their cause was hopeless Haffer deserted by the time the attack came those that stayed shell-shocked often in tears were waiting their chance to surrender in Baghdad Saddam Hussein was told of the news what Korea would be sorrow hey Anya Saddam said our young soldiers were behaving like women they weren't fighting like real men 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 the Marines in the lead tanks headed for Saddam's second line of defense armored divisions from the Regular Army come on posts waited for the first chemical attack we had tapped Marines forward through yet but Baghdad had taken a decision we didn't think that it was wise to use them that's all what I can say that it was not it was not wise to use such kind of weapons and such kind of a war with with such an enemy if chemicals had killed large numbers of the Marines threading their way through the minefields the Pentagon planned to flood Baghdad with six feet of water knocking off the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers would have caused enormous destruction downstream the loss of civilian life would have been terrible and we really had not thoroughly analyzed Magana we knew how to hit the dams but I know if we analyze what the affect downstream would have been but nevertheless it would have been a good one to threaten the Iraqis with and of course there was always the implicit threat of nuclear weapons I don't think we ever would have used them but nevertheless the Iraqis didn't know that and we could have if provocation was serious enough in these first arms 8,000 Iraqis were captured after Vietnam the American military vowed never to underestimate an enemy but in Vietnam the enemy had fought for a cause he was willing to die for my own guess is that about 75 percent of them gave up and about 25 percent fought as the day wore on I began to become elated in Schwarzkopf swaram relief mixed with the fear of heavy counter-attacks but the attacks were not materializing by the morning's end Schwarzkopf came to realize the Marine success was endangering his plan to trap the Republican Guard the US Marines had advanced into Kuwait so quickly the Republican Guard hadn't come South to counter-attack Schwartz cop's plan to lure them to destruction was failing and the American and British tank forces were not due to attack until the following day that would give the Republican Guard time to escape I decided to move the main attack up to 3 o'clock in the afternoon one of the principles of the overall campaign was to inflict as much damage on the Republican Guard as we possibly could and they were sitting very very deep you know out back in the desert and so therefore it became obvious that if we were going to inflict that damage on the Republican Guard we had to go ahead and and inflict it as early as possible in the 30 minutes before the troops attacked British and American artillery fired 11,000 rounds at the iraqi frontlines ahead [Music] for the first time the British used the mlrs the multiple launch rocket system each rocket exploded above the enemy troops spraying the ground with hundreds of grenades in those 30 minutes over 600,000 M NRS grenades fell on the Iraqi positions the general leading the attack was a careful and methodical soldier he'd seen war before in Vietnam he'd lost one of his legs members a Vietnam a very sharp clear to me I mean never far from my mind and especially during the Gulf War we'd say to each other but I think we all felt that we're gonna do it right this time as the barrage lifting American and British troops surged across the desert this was the army that had been stationed in Europe to fight World War 3 against the Soviets now the end of the Cold War allowed it to be unleashed against Iraq the generals expected two days of fighting to breach the frontline defenses followed by six days of fierce tank battles with the Republican Guard I thought that we would lose somewhere between in the breaching units that we would lose somewhere between 20 and 40 percent the American 1st Infantry Division had the job of storming the trenches to clear a part of the British tanks to avoid hand-to-hand fighting they plan to bury alive the Iraqi defenders a thought occurred to me we could actually use these plows to fill in the trenches in fact I'd tested it myself I got down in the ditch myself and had then I had two tanks plow towards me just just to see what it did I'd learned several things and one is I learned that it that it happens very quickly so the defender has a choice to make but he has to make it very quickly you can either give up and hop out of the trench he can try to run down the trench and get away but he better do those quickly because these things move it and they an amazing speed down there along the Iraqi border ran a sand barrier a berm beyond it lay five miles of minefields and then the Iraqi trenches 60 miles of trenches were plowed under most Iraqis surrendered the official army estimate is that 150 were buried before dawn 10 Special Forces teams had flown ahead of the advance and hidden behind enemy lines concealed in hides they peered through people's watching for signs of an Iraqi counter-attack or for the deployment of chemical or nuclear weapons one team alpha 525 hid on the banks of a drainage canal there was two girls in a small boy and they come up and actually looked into the peephole into the face of the sergeant that was inside the people two of my soldiers left to hide sight the back of it into the ditch with automatic automatic silenced weapons in a silenced pistol and actually had these children in the sights of the pistol and inquired of me what are we going to do what should we do with these children shall we shoot them and I know in my heart had I told him to shoot they were shot their children but it was an instantaneous decision no we're not going to shoot children it's not their war alpha five to five was soon attacked by a hundred and fifty soldiers they killed 40 but the attacks kept coming I can remember feeling inside myself that my gosh were all gonna die here there is no way that we can get out of this they would mount attacks and they would give out a yell an Arab battle cry like it was it was terrifying American f-16s were called in the men banner who flashed a mirror to show their position and it really was until we is on that helicopter and well on our way back that finally it hit me like we made it out of here without a single soldier hurt which was a miracle in Washington it was Sunday morning President Bush was awaiting news heavy casualties risked the destruction of his presidency and the abandonment of the war I got briefed just before I went into the church the president was right ahead of me I passed him a note I said mr. president things are going very well we all went back to the White House I got out a map from Time magazine just sort of show him exactly what was happening and I was able to tell him there that things were going extraordinarily well we had assumed that the toughest part of the ground war in terms of casualties would have been the the early hours of that conflict and in fact what we were finding was that the air war had been enormous ly affect David decimated the Iraqi forces in the day in fact were collapsing in front of us on the second day the Marines pushed on towards Kuwait City ahead they believed they sat on second line of defense the well equipped armored divisions of the regular Iraqi army but for once the Iraqis had surprise on their side out of the burning oil fields on the Marines right flank hundreds of Iraqi tanks began to advance the Americans regrouped they were facing a counter-attack Saddam Hussein had personally approved objected to this I said I'm not in favor of this counter-attack because the divisions that have retreated need to double their strength before they can attack and regain their battlefield positions and we didn't have those kind of reserves can about Yahoo Saddam said no let's leave the general in charge to sort that out two hours later they told us the divisions had regained their positions but when L fill up mr. Adelman anymore Saddam looked at me and said didn't I tell you this way is better i lemon up on holiday at the marine air operation center a response was organized orders were passed to a flight of four cobra helicopter gunships stationed at a makeshift airbase near the Kuwaiti border as the cobra's took off the Marines on the ground were already fighting the largest tank battle in their history we'd got the word there was an Iraqi counter-attack as we arrived out there we saw horizon horizon Iraqi tanks armored vehicles and as we started hitting these tanks and things started happening in our favor the attack basically just ground to a halt all the tank stuff your armored vehicles stopped the hatches flew open the Iraqi started bailing out of the tanks and you know scramble around in the desert trying to figure out what was going on the Iraqi troops trying to retreat into the oil smoke I was like you know something out of a you know spaghetti western with a tripwire and the horses fallen it was you know as you engage these troops with twenty millimeter it was first time I'd ever done that and they just kind of pitch over in the desert over a hundred armored vehicles were destroyed saddam was told the advance on kuwait city had resumed colonel moon jaein minute j in the he was very upset he was deeply depressed and for reasons known only to himself he accused five top ranking officers of betrayal and then ordered their execution at a higher than what Tata the sentence was carried out immediately by his personal guards had a self alpha demo home Phillip once we broke that counter-attack we broke their back that was the last gasp on their part to throw us back out of Kuwait and from then on we had pretty we had a pretty straight shot into the city that night a scud missile landed on an American Balance killing 28 soldiers the worst casualty is so far Saddam Hussein had always hoped casualties would undermine American resolve but now it was too late Saddam issued a general order to withdraw down himself issued the order to withdraw when the land assault started he became desperate he was now convinced that it was impossible for him to keep Kuwait in Kuwait City Iraqi soldiers began to pile into every vehicle they could find a vast convoy took shape these pictures were taken by the Kuwaiti resistance I frequently talked to the resistance in Kuwait City via satellite telephone they picked up and was a colonel from the Kuwaiti air force who'd been trapped in Kuwait City and he'd been in the resistance all this time he started to tell me about the Iraqis forming up and fleeing the town he became so emotionally happy relieved overjoyed about his country being free the terrible oppressors leaving he started to cry I'm embarrassed to say it but I started to cry as well I had never been so touched in my entire life an f15 crew their aircraft laden with bombs for an attack into Iraq was given a new mission they were told to attack the convoy leaving Kuwait City and stop it at all costs as the crew walked to their aircraft their commanding officer spoke to them he'd received an early report of the casualties caused by the scud missile that had landed on Darin they told him of the importance of the mission it's not just a retreating army and these guys are rapists killers murderers and coincidentally a scud had just hidden hit dollar on airport and killed 60 Americans and convinced them and I'm sure that that I did that they needed to put some hate in their heart and go out and stop this son of a bitches from getting that acquaintance as we dovo to the clouds that the picture was out absolutely astounding there were thousands of headlights hitting on every road that led North out of Kuwait City it's almost like hitting the jackpot I mean there are vehicles all over the place it is a very lucrative target we had 12 500-pound bombs and we elected to drop them three at a time Crouse and sandals bombs destroyed the lead vehicles and created a huge traffic jam soon other aircraft arrived [Applause] they had had time to load up with cluster bombs no Boehner the first what come to me how do bidi now what will be now bubbles or been a global there were many wounded people on the road some of them without arms or legs they were just stranded there half dead yet so hopefully were hiding but hubbub a new a midweek when they saw our car they started to crawl towards us we didn't have space for them well I'm here now felony murder my noble girl with all the strength they could muster they were hitting the side of the car I think it's quite a shock windows were smeared with blood may he never be anywhere but we had no space we had to drive on the pilots called it the highway of death three days into the land war the army that had occupied Kuwait City no longer existing as a fighting force thousands of footprints led off into the desert hundreds had been killed in the coming hours what had happened here would become an important factor in ending the war why did we bomb them because it was a great deal of military equipment on that Highway I had given orders to all of my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroyed this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq this was a bunch of of rapists murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now we're trying to get out of the country before they were caught later that day the British also experienced the destructiveness of airpower the British division had peeled away from the main American thrust to attack the Iraqi reserves behind the old front line mostly it was a matter of rounding up thousands of demoralized soldiers Iraqi troops killed only one British soldier but just before 3 o'clock British troops captured an Iraqi position known as objective steal two British warriors full of infantryman took up position near the Iraqi trenches what happened next remains controversial the British say they told the Americans where they were the Americans deny this what is certain is that while the British prepared to destroy the Iraqi emplacements two American a TENS concluded the Warriors were enemy tanks it was just what a flash al-insan you've got the searing pain across your face in your hands and then all of a sudden I had this vision of meself floating up towards the air and I'll even perceive meself well you know that your numbers up saw the thing now this year on your way to heaven I'll look in the back of the vehicle and what I saw in the back of my vehicle I I would never want to see anything like that again in my life and I realized that to the two lads who died in the rear of the vehicle he was sitting next to me I'll see the second vehicle the vehicle had come round Elba's is suddenly going in and out like a pressurize can it's expanding and contracting and expanding and then contracting and I realized and note in that split-second that that vehicle was kind of explode nine men died friendly fire killed at least 35 Americans a quarter of their dead an American spy plane now recorded this radar image of the battlefield it showed the Republican Guard Saddam Hussein's best troops starting to escape - Schwartz comes fury American forces had yet to engage these elite divisions over 60,000 men and their tanks here we have the golden opportunity to accomplish far beyond our dreams of what it is we set out to accomplish and to get this thing over once and for all very quickly and it doesn't seem like we are able to capitalize on that opportunity the American tanks were driving hard Schwarzkopf wanted them to drive harder he had assumed the Republican Guard would move south to defend Kuwait but they hadn't and the Americans were struggling to make up the distance Schwarzkopf wanted a headlong charge the commander on the ground was more cautious you get a probability of increased casualties you get the probability of an attack that starts and stops and starts and stops loses momentum I wanted to hit the Republican Guards with a with a three division fist I didn't want to poke at them with fingers in other words piecemeal commitment of my forces I want to hit him with a fist at full speed at full speed on the third afternoon of the war battle was finally joined with the Republican Guard an armored cavalry troop of nine tanks and twelve infantry carriers with leading the American advance ahead behind a slight rise in the desert Republican Guard tanks waited in ambush the first tank approached as we crested the rise my gunner identified tanks to our direct front he said identified tanks I yelled fire as I was young fire on the intercom that got erupted around impacted on a frontal slope of the tank and the tank commander was ejected out of the hatch and he himself was was in flames as the other times crested the rise they began to select their targets and engage in almost simultaneous manner so 15 seconds before there was a cohesive coherent Iraqi defense 15 seconds later that defense was completely in flames when we look back over the armored vehicles you think I think my god this is what an armored cavalry troop in the assault can accomplish in that short amount of time they called it the Battle of 73 easting after the map coordinate 28 Republican Guard tanks were destroyed that night the Americans routed an entire division of the Republican Guard the other five Republican Guard divisions started a desperate retreat their best hope of survival came from an unlikely quarter : Powell and Dick Cheney came over to the White House to give the president their daily report on how the war was going and by that time we knew both from the military reports and from satellites about the highway of death leading North out of Kuwait City and the incredible destruction of the Iraqi convoys and and so on we knew all this would eventually be on television and and I remember very clearly : Powell saying that this thing was turning into a massacre and that to continue it beyond a certain point would be unamerican and he even used the word unchivalrous while the American army battled the Republican God the Iraqi positions around Kuwait lay empty American marines gathered outside the city the question now was whether the Republican God could be destroyed before it became politically expedient to stop a war which has already achieved its main purpose the liberation of Kuwait 72 hours after launching their offensive the US Marines gathered amid the burning oil fields outside Kuwait City they had defeated it's a rocky defenders with fewer casualties than anyone had dared hope but to the north the battle to destroy Iraq's Republican Guard was still raging destroyed Iraqi tanks lined the road into Kuwait City the Marine commander had feared thousands of his troops were supposed to die 28 and but now the city was his we had made arrangements for the Arab coalition forces to go into the city [Music] and I was sitting there getting a little restless and wondering okay what are we gonna do I'm tired of sitting here so so we drove into the city and the hike pouring was something I'll never forget I don't know where all the people came from they came down to the side of the road by the thousands and they had Kuwaiti flags and some had American flags vehicles that the Iraqis hadn't stolen or destroyed they had acquired some of those so they were driving out after being around us and this mad circle I thought sure we're gonna crush a vehicle what they were saying was god Bless You America god bless you we love you very very emotional moment for us after all of us Saddam Hussein had expected a bloody stay light on the battlefield that would undermine the coalition's resolve now he was fighting to survive the Allies wanted to destroy his retreating army above all its elite Republican Guard divisions and break Iraq as a military power his regime was judged unlikely to survive such humiliation I mean what kind of and yep he sat in front of me and he was almost in tears not crying but almost in tears he said we do not know what God will bring upon us tomorrow a million men out of people sooner look at he was virtually collapsing he had reached the depths Kuwait City was free but the most intense fighting of the war was about to begin while the British rounded up the army in the south the American tanks were chasing Iraq's best troops the Republican Guard except for a rearguard they were retreating but the Americans were determined to destroy them we never once said to anybody your mission is going to be complete as soon as we kicked the Iraqis out of Kuwait that was not what we told our forces we said to our forces that we wanted to close with and destroy the Republican Guards the Iraqi rearguard prepared for battle as the Americans advanced scores of Tanks from the Republican Guards Medina division were dug in along a lone Ridge the defensive lines stretched for six miles what happened next became known as the Battle of Medina Ridge I know there's enemy out there but I don't know where to heck they're at and then boom we were in it I look up and it was about 3,700 meters away and there's BMPs and t-72 sitting on the ridge and we discovered later from a from a sergeant we captured that we had caught them during lunch welcome gate online within three seconds had that used with their first rounds moving about 20-25 miles an hour it's like a cavalry charge towards the Iraqi emplacements and all you can see every time we shot was a massive explosion the Iraqi tanks only had a range of one mile around half that of the American tanks the Turks were flipping 4050 feet in the air eleven tons of steel just it was incredible to see a gun tube and the turret is spinning up in the air and landed hundreds of yards away from the vehicles it was really inspiring the destructive power of that unit and I distinctly remember have you this feeling in the pit of your stomach about the power that that that thing has and we can bring to bear we took prisoners very few at Medina Ridge very few I saw three and in the desert you could see for miles most people I saw were dead later on in the battle when I rolled up there there was pieces everywhere I have never seen such destruction in my life I was just shocked that people can do so much devastation in such a short period of time in all 300 Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles together with their crews were destroyed along the six mile front one American was killed nothing stood between the retreating Republican Guard and destruction a radio message told Saddam Hussein of the defeat gained the support of opposing Mia when Saddam thought his downfall was imminent he asked me do you think the Allies will come as far as Baghdad what kind of he was quite desperate and frightened with the rearguard destroyed Schwarzkopf sent American tanks driving for the sea meanwhile more tanks and airborne forces raced to close the trap on the Iraqi troops 60 helicopters from the American 101st Airborne Division leapfrogged a hundred miles deep into the Iraqi desert their mission was an ambitious one the troops had orders to build an air base from which Apache helicopter gunships could attack the Republican Guard until the American tanks closed in within two hours the base will see it was operational waves of Apache gunships arrived and refueled then they headed north to hunt the enemy doc gaber led one flight of four Apaches we took off due north as fast as we could go probably 30 feet off the ground 120 knots the terrain changed we started flying over marshes this is what Gabriel could see through his gun camera he found the Iraqis on a causeway across the marshes north of Kuwait we saw people dismounted infantry I'd see the ak-47 raised with the white flag on it initially I didn't fire my chalk two or three would say hey the guy shooting at is you know they're shooting at us with white flags on the end of their barrels and my philosophy changed and then I'm not gonna take any chances so when I see troops I'm you know I'm gonna fire hundreds of soldiers were lying in the reeds along the edges of the causeway as Gabriel continued down the cause an American pilot who'd been shot down and was parachuting to the ground put out an emergency broadcast the pilot landed safely a rescue helicopter set off five of the eight crew would not survive this was an opportunity to really go save somebody who died and he took two Apaches and my Blackhawk and just started going there right there within a couple of kilometers of where this guy schools they wasn't we're still seeing American troops so we thought man it's gonna be not difficult and then all of a sudden like maybe a minute later we are in the middle of a crossfire which is the worst anti-aircraft guns we'd ever had we gotten shot at before but but it was clear that these guys were waiting for us you could feel the aircraft shudder and I think that's when the tail boom kind of just separated from the rest of the aircraft and then everything like it was some time later and all of a sudden I just realized I was lying down and and I thought I was dead it was it was the most weird feeling because nothing hurt and I couldn't hear anything and it was it was very peaceful and I thought well I must be dead I looked up and I saw five Iraqi guys with their weapon you know life was pointing at me so then I knew I wasn't dead and I knew I was captured then one of them reached down grabbed me by the arm and stood me up and that's when he separated my already broken right arm and then I knew I was pretty badly hurt and clearly it's really not dead all afternoon waves of gunships attack the Iraqi troops in the confusion of battle no one can be sure how many units were retreating undetected but the American forces intended to cut them off and trap them all in a ring of Allied tanks I'm sure more that you've done it we spent the whole journey on foot walking among dead bodies dead soldiers were everywhere I was like Jewel Osco God the Army's morale and collapse I wasn't you [Music] it doesn't seem like this Third Ward I just feel sorry for and when you throw out food they all run it doesn't seem like they want the fuck seventy thousand had surrendered the Americans no longer bothered to garden they just sent them to the rear to close the trap on the Iraqis and particularly the Republican gone the fighting had to continue but in Washington America's most senior general worried that horrific television pictures of the slaughter would eventually stain the reputation of the US military the question was how much additional destruction do we want to inflict upon the Iraqi army that was in the Kuwait theater I'll decided to call Norman Schwarzkopf it was 7:00 a.m. in Washington 3:00 p.m. in the desert : said to me what are your plans my response to him was we plan to continue to execute the operation and continue to drive towards the sea east towards the sea and he then said to me how long would that take you and my response to him was it will probably take until it will take until the end of tomorrow so we could ceasefire tomorrow evening at dark and we would have completely accomplished the plan sitting in the Pentagon how knew this meant another day of killing the president had to make a decision after talking to Schwarzkopf I went over to the White House I took at the president through the situation on the ground I pointed out they were starting to see some scenes that were unpleasant and we were in the window of calling an end to it so is that there was not unnecessary additional loss of life on the part of American and coalition forces are on the part of Iraqi youngsters : said we basically have done it we have destroyed the Republican Guard we have expelled them from Kuwait we have essentially completed our objectives and I believe we are just a few hours from completing that effort and I would expect that within the next 24 hours I would be bringing you a recommendation with respect to the cessation of hostilities the president then said well if that's the case but within the window why not end it out and there was a feel and he was especially pronounced on the part of general Powell that we'd asked the troops to do about all we could do by way of continuing the slaughter and in fact the Iraqi resistance was collapsing fairly rapidly and it was pretty clear that we'd won a tremendous victory colon Powell called me he said I'm at the white house we've discussed ending the war could you in fact execute a ceasefire if it was declared effective midnight Washington time tonight which would have been first thing in the morning our time I told him that I could live with that a little bit and he said yeah I think that's probably a right thing to do the words to that effect quite frankly the driving force behind my saying that I could live with it was the fact that if we went on another day we were going to kill some more of our people and we had already won an overwhelming victory with a minimum of casualties and that was good enough for me while Powell and Schwarzkopf thought the president telephoned his allies he informed them that the time had come to end the war and at 5:57 three minutes before 6:00 the president reaffirmed his decision so I think this is the thing to do and that was it that was the decision it was a decision that I had that as best I can recall there was absolutely no dissent from on the part of any of the president's advisors deep down I wanted if we really had done quite enough but I did not dissent from the decision did not argue that we should go should go another day it would be another 24 hours after the war had ended before surveillance photographs which show that half of the Republican Guards tanks had survived well I was no longer there I think perhaps I might have argued it very differently if I had been I'm very firmly and I think that I might have said look um maybe this thing would never have got started unless I was a firm enough ally to do it and I can only tell you that in my experience we've got to do the job properly before we finish in the war room there had been no thought of a ceasefire after six months of planning the next day would see the Iraqis trapped Jos worst Goff walked into the war room and he said we are going to have a ceasefire well I thought that he was Justin so I said that's bullshit so he says no I'm serious tonight we will have a ceasefire so I said we have not accomplished our mission why is it that we're going to stop what we set out to do and stop the war and just watch golf says Carol god dammit the president of United States has made a decision to stop this war I was just damn 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 at door the British Army charged out of the desert towards the road running from Kuwait City to Iraq as we pulled over the top of the ridge in front of us was a highway and we'd seen dead bodies before but it was in the next few hours that once you were actually in and among it for the first time walking around clearing your positions or whatever that's when it's staying here there actually came across of how much carnage there was that none of these pictures appeared until after the war but they were the scenes the men in the White House had anticipated as they weighed the political risks of continuing the conflict the British troops called the road by the name the pilots in given it the highway of death there was a young Iraqi soldier who was lying in the back of the car he had very brown eyes were open and and staring and he had a beautiful look on his face it wasn't until he looked a bit closer that you realized that he was missing a hand and part of his leg being thrown off it seems likely the tester and a thousand Iraqi soldiers died in the six weeks preceding the ground attack another 10,000 died in the four days of the land war there was a lot of civilian equipment have been stolen from Kuwait City for me the thing that I find most distressing was the smell of cheap perfume this sweet sickly smelled I was ready for the smell of war but I wasn't pray for the smell of kind of everyday life and normality I felt there was an immense sense of evil and when I detested being there and for 3 days that we actually sat on the highway I hated it and it invoked me more and more and more the way is liberated Iraq's army is defeated our military objectives are met I am pleased to announce that at midnight tonight Eastern Standard Time exactly 100 hours since ground operations commenced and six weeks is the start of Operation Desert Storm all United States and coalition forces will suspend offensive combat operations three hours later the fighting stopped Iraqi intelligence monitored the president's announcement button at the fontleby Security Airways I then rang the president and told him that Bush had agreed to this ceasefire his mood changed just like that he felt himself to be a great great hero he started to say we've won with one step ahead not know yet Oh his morale rose from zero to a hundred each day of war and leather all Saddam's regime more vulnerable to overthrow now the humiliation was over the greatest fear allied tanks in Baghdad was gone the Allies had stopped the war Saddam could concentrate on surviving they were not kind to us they did not love us to stay in power it was quite clear but they wanted to avoid casualties because George Bush interred that adventurer promising the American people that it will not be another Vietnam and he kept his promise very efficiently on the question of going back there if you remember the Vietnam War we had no international legitimacy for what we did as a result we first of all lost the Battle of world public opinion eventually we lost the battle at home in the Gulf War we had great international legitimacy in the form of eight United Nations resolutions every one of which said kick Iraq out of Kuwait did not say one word about going into Iraq taking Baghdad conquering the whole country and and hanging Saddam the same that's point number one point number two had we gone on to Baghdad I don't believe the French would have gone and I'm quite sure that the Arab coalition would not have gone the Coalition would have ruptured the only people who would have gone would have been the United Kingdom and the United States of America and oh by the way I think we'd still be there we'd be like a dinosaur on a tar pit we could not have gotten out and we'd still be the occupying car we paying 100% of all the cost to administer all Barack [Music] two days after the ceasefire a brigade of Republican Guards returning to Iraq fired upon the 24th Infantry Division the Americans replied with overwhelming firepower seven months after a rocky for the Aussies marched into Kuwait the last battle had been fought [Music] the conflict costs 240 coalition lions 24 of them British stopping the war allowed 1/3 of Saddam's forces to escape but Iraq had been broken as a military power and the coalition occupied a great sway of southern Iran [Music] the Allies judged Saddam Hussein would now be toppled in a palace coup instead another more terrible and more desperate Wars about to begin [Music] in the Iraqi cities close to the Allied front lines Saddam's rule had collapsed ordinary people took up arms against the regime they eighty [Applause] these pictures were filmed in Canton but the scene was repeated throughout southern Iraq the rebels were predominantly Shia Muslims they formed the bulk of the population in that part of Iraq [Music] again and again President Bush had called for uprisings now hours after the war's end he did so again I've always said that the Moroccan people should put him aside I want to see a end you mentioned World War two there was a there was a definitive end to that conflict and now we have Saddam Hussein's still there in Iraq second city soldiers who had fled from Kuwait joined the rebels in the prison was a Britain would been taken there two months before from his home in Kuwait City well we heard that small arms fire then there was more to fire at companies then more small eyes well the guards by this time had had melted away it disappeared whether they went to defend the outside to Rivet or not and difficult I'd say we couldn't tell but when the gates were shot open everyone rushed out more telecom beyond and not thought of in the world it wasn't organized opposition people just rebelled against oppression and cruelty and starvation against the executions and detentions there was very cool injustice and people rose up to overthrow this regime Kalla phenomena the revolutionary had taken command by this time there wasn't any doubt that the police in the army were not in control and the general mood was you know pleasure joy everyone was free Basra was close enough to the American lines for Brock Matthews to hitch a ride to safety we did not think in the present nor any of us thought at that time that Saddam would would continue in power having suffered such a such a resounding defeat with victory achieved the political concentration that had thought such success now seemed to desert the White House team Norman Schwarzkopf is left to cement the details of the ceasefire with the Iraqis calm sports car said how did we make this happen what do we do and we had a state department representative in our war room we said to the State Department what is it we're supposed to do mr. State Department rapidly and the State Department gate which we call the Iraqi salute he didn't know I had no instructions whatsoever so lacking any and based upon the conversations : I'd had I I called my stenographer and and dictated my own terms of reference and then I call up : and said I'm gonna send these to you you know if if you all approves and send them back to me and this is what I'll do the Pentagon changed happy - glad we do they and put in a few fixes it gave it to the State Department in the State Department's changed a couple of words and send it back tear senses use this Schwarzkopf decided that the talks be held in coalition occupied Iraq near the town of Sawa the Iraqi leadership wanted a deal that would return the nerf the captured territory and above all allow them to crush the rebellion without fear of Allied troops intervening Schwarzkopf objectives was simpler I went to Safwan with my own instructions which basically number one was to get our POWs back and then number two to make sure that we had very very clear lines drawn so that we didn't have any inadvertent battles after that a pair of Apache gunships hovered over the Iraqi convoy just hours before Saddam had personally briefed the Iraqi generals arriving to Meech was come saddam cannon would be a lien per year better saddam wanted to consolidate the ceasefire in any way he could and he ordered his officers to give any information they had about the minefields and the prisoners of war he didn't want to give the West any excuse to resume writing oh yeah he wanted to sign a ceasefire agreement of any price okay I wouldn't be ha comforted by the Saudi commander-in-chief Schwarzkopf led the defeated Iraqi generals to the tent where the meeting would be held once the talks got underway Schwarzkopf got everything he wanted but so did the Iraqis what they were most concerned about was that this was going to be a permanent border and and over and over again they kept saying is this a permanent border or is this just temporary and I kept having to reassure them but no this is not a permanent border this is a temporary demarcation line between our forces and then this fellow looked at me and said well can we fly our helicopters and I knew the great devastation we had inflicted upon their roads in their bridges and that seemed like a very reasonable request to me general Sultan Hashim Khan Ishmael was a top official in the defense ministry his colleague general sulla Abood Mahmoud had commanded the Iraqi forces in Kuwait the two generals had achieved the objective Saddam Hussein had set for them above all the Iraqi armed forces could operate freely within their territory and though Iraq fighter planes were forbidden to fly its helicopters weren't Saddam had the tools he needed for survival they should surrender equipment the lot we're not dealing for the dictator he has got not only to be defeated well and truly he's got to be seen to be defeated by his own people so that they identified the privations they've had to go through with his actions and we didn't do that I think what we should have insisted upon is Saddam Hussein come to south won that wuz understand because that allowed him to blame his generals for the defeat and not eat himself Saddam Hussein now moved forces loyal to him from Baghdad to suppress the uprising American troops could see the fighting from their positions but they were ordered not to intervene my advice to the president throughout the period of the surprising is that this did not seem to me to be an operation that we needed to get get involved in because I couldn't figure out who was doing what to him and it would have required us to move further into Iraq and take responsibility for that part of Iraq and for a purpose that was not stated and that was the quagmire therein laid Vietnam as far as we were concerned because we would still be there and what's more given the American way of doing things we would have then had the responsibility for rebuilding all of the infrastructure in charge and we were just determined not to get sucked into that trap inside Iran as each rebel village and town film there were terrible reprisals some estimates put the dead in the tens of thousands the Iraqi regime likes to film itself at work these pictures show shear prisoners and senior officers from the regime the tape reached the West two years later the Americans did not interfere therefore it took us only a few days to recover from the surprise to reorganize our troops reorganize our resources and impose peace and order and the southern governors it took us two weeks to do that just a few miles away half a million coalition troops began to lead Iraq after months in the desert they were returning home [Music] the Allies still hurt one of Saddam's generals would overthrow him but the ill-fated uprising had caused the military to rally round saddam out of fear of something worse the White House had miscalculated meanwhile the Iraqi leader had a bargain to keep we didn't hear any bombing at night that was very strange and you start to hope you start to think gosh the war's over he can't help it somebody came in and just said get your things together you're going and you look around see what things I have no things and he said you know gone go out and you wonder if it's a trick and you kind of put your head around the side of the cell if somebody's waiting outside there with a cricket bat or something and there was a line of people standing outside and yellow uniforms and now I joined the end of the line there were hundreds of reporters hundreds and hundreds and that's really quite overwhelming I mean you've just been insulting and I think that's really when you thought well I probably am released whenever anybody gets back from war trying to convince anybody what the realities of war are like is very difficult no not just my situation now if you've been shot at or in combat and seen friends die see in the films we don't smell it you don't hear it and you don't see grown men cry and you don't see what it's like to see real people hurt and you can never put it in words when you return over now there was a second uprising in the north where the Kurds live Saddam had used chemical weapons to suppress previous revolts there but the Kurds sensed weakness the secret police headquarters in Seoul ammonia was one of the regime's nerve centers for years Kurdish guerrillas have fought for independence now they united with mutinous troops and attacked the men inside resisted desperately they knew there was much to avenge as night fell the gates were stormed a Kurdish teenager educated in Brittany was there he and his friends had listened to President Bush on the radio when George Bush said that he would back up a people's revolution in Iraq then they thought that's all we need that's all we wanted to hear so they just did it in the morning the local people flocked to the burning building many were hoping to learn what had happened to family and friends had been imprisoned some of the staffer Aziz's school friends were among the missing we were really scared because of this you know death camp which had been known anyone who enter would never walk out again we walked in towards this one room and we saw these hooks like he gave the butcher shop where they hang the meat on and on one of the hooks we saw a body and you know we saw that a lot that they the Iraqis would put people on there I thought how could they do this to people there was bodies everywhere Iraqi security officers all dead on the floor it was raining as well at the time and all the puddles of you just blood I remember his swearing at the Iraqis and I remember going up to a couple of bodies and kicking them as spin on Kurdish opposition leaders who'd been living abroad began to return Suleiman year was the heartland of the party run by Jalal Talabani the Kurdish politicians wanted to trigger a coup against Saddam they hoped a new Iraqi leader would let the Kurds run their own affairs [Music] [Applause] [Music] traveling with Taliban he was an American an observer from the United States Senate he believes that day was a turning point at that point everything hung in the balance had the United States signal its support for the uprising I am convinced that would have succeeded there were Iraqi generals who were in fact in touch with the opposition and who were sitting on the fence waiting to see what would happen and when the United States did nothing said nothing sat on its hands of course they took the course of caution that very night Saddam Hussein's troops attacked Washington had decided he did not want to support an uprising that might lead to the breakup of Iran the rebel forces fought back but they were hopelessly outgunned the Kurdish leaders would encourage the revolts have made a terrible miscalculation as shells began landing on the cities there was panic not only were the casualties heavy but they feared a chemical attack at any moment refugees brought terrifying stories about the behavior of the advancing troops anyone over 15 anyone that was capable of carrying on this shoot they have got no mercy whatsoever they came with an internship of revenge I do not want of course American forces beyond our mandate we've done the heavy lifting our kids perform with superior courage and they don't need to be thrust into a war that's been going on for you the Iraqi forces advanced relentlessly and the cities of Kurdistan emptied the folder a million people were on the movement they headed for the mountains trying to reach the safety of the Turkish and Iranian border when George Bush said that he didn't want the American military interfering in this the Kurds got scared we heard the shelling and the bombing and Alex will never came around and he said look you've heard what people are saying about the Iraqis I think you'd be you know why is it was just leave Slimani so my dad agreed I said okay we'll leave it reminded me of refugees leaving Paris in June 1940 just ahead of the German army everybody knew of George Bush's call for for them to rise up an overthrow Saddam Hussein and they all had exactly one question why isn't Bush helping us the American air crews patrolling the skies above Iraq could see the Kurds being chased into the mountains but they had strict orders not to intervene instead they watched we saw helicopters chasing a lot of people down a road and we saw the gunships shooting at them you could see the smoke coming out of the gunship and occasionally see flashes of the tracers even though the Sun had just started coming up Oh everybody start to panic I was shocked staring at the helicopter and it there's this bright light a little smoke coming out and then this red thing would just fly towards the mountain hit the cars the intention was to kill us we thought frustrated in the fact that we couldn't help the uprising that was going on in the ground for whatever political reasons that were above our rank and best we could do is report what we saw and eventually hope that it was taken care of [Music] see the only issue that came up is should we do something about the Iraqi helicopters but had never been one of our objectives to get involved in this kind of civil uprising between factions within Iraq and the Iraqi government and so it was not clear what purpose would have been achieved by getting ourselves mixed up in the middle way the Iraqi forces closed inexorably but the president had promised America the troops were coming home [Music] the British wanted to set up safe havens for the curse but the President refused what was self-evident was that unless some action was taken we may we'll be seeing the genocide of a nation we found it intolerable and for that reason we began to proceed with our plans to do something about it America and the president were celebrating [Music] but the television images of the Kurdish Exodus were making the linear victory ring hollow [Music] just before the celebration the president asked James Baker to see how the situation could be defused we did not want to take on the responsibility for having to create a safe haven there and if it was going to be enforced he wasn't gonna be enforced by others he was gonna have to be enforced by my uncle whiskers and we really didn't want to do it Nathan's public relations team suggested a visit to the cub as we were flying along we all of a sudden saw a whole sea of people camped out in the mountains and this was early spring when he was quite cold we landed there and then we took the four-wheel drive vehicles up the mountain there were 50 to 75,000 people in this every piece of ground had a little tent or makeshift shelter on it and they cut down all the trees for firewood and they were drinking out of the mountain streams and some were barefooted Baker was able to spend only seven minutes on the ground the four security men I saw him away but in those minutes he saw and heard enough to be sure this was not just a humanitarian like that it also had the potential to become a political disaster I call the president from the airplane and told him I'd never seen anything like this and that there are a lot of that a lot of people were gonna die if we didn't do something and do something quickly and that he needed needed to to really break break whatever China was required in order to get it done I have directed the US military to haricot begin immediately to establish several encampments in northern Iraq where relief supplies for these refugees will be made available in large quantities I can well appreciate that many Kurds have good reason to fear for their safety let me reassure them that adequate security will be provided at these temporary sites u.s. British and French air and ground forces the impact on the American psyche what happened in Vietnam have been bogged down in a ground war damaged America very badly it was a very real issue and the prospect of another huge problem with large numbers of American troops came back into normal a long it's hardly surprising that they weren't immediately attracted to them but once that the full dimension of what was happening once Jim Baker saw it once they had absorbed what we were saying them about the seriousness of the problem then they became engaged and then things began to move very speedily the final scenes of the Gulf War were played on the men who planned the war feared what they called the ragged in a quagmire like Vietnam or a stalemate like Korea this was a ragged end no one proscenium to rebellion brutally suppressed by a military which through in its lot with Saddam and kept him in power the Iraqi regime vital desire we decided that enough is enough let's withdraw our forces or security from them let them do whatever they like for a while might take months or years but in the end they will come back to their homeland because they realized that there is no other option for them except to be part of Greg and part of the state of two weeks after the liberation the Emir of Kuwait which has been well into his country [Applause] the war might have been fought against tyranny but it had not been fought for democracy America honored its returning soldiers after Vietnam there had been no cheering cries but the Gulf War allowed the American military could rediscover their sense of pride and purpose general Freddie Franks who led the attack on the Republican Guard have lost a leg in Vietnam for him this day and in a 20-year journey soldiers I was with in the hospital got so tired of having to explain that they were wounded in Vietnam and people saying to them a woman what a shame all that for nothing that they stopped talking about after was all my wife and I walked over to the Vietnam Memorial and talked to some of the Vietnam veterans who were there and I said to them hey this one's for you to the Gulf War did not have raise the shadow of Vietnam as Bosnia was to show America would remain reluctant to become the world's policemen but the American people were once again proud of their soldier for a time America proclaimed a new world order it was to prove too grand an illusion but nonetheless the generals have confounded those who forecast disaster we had accomplished an overwhelming military victory we had accomplished all of our objectives we had inflicted great great casualties and great damage to the Republican Guard we had inflicted great damage to the Iraqi military force and we had ejected the Iraqis out of Kuwait and that after all was the purpose of it and we had done it all with an amazingly low loss of life Bush returned to the Congress in time yet two years later the American people would vote him out for the president - there was to be a ragged end I can report to the nation aggression is defeated the war is over to gain support for the liberation of Kuwait Bush had compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler but Saddam and his tivity had survived he's got his job while the campaign sticker would say how about you when you demonize an enemy such as the president tenet we decided to do with Saddam Hussein which was a useful way to to raise public interest in support of what we were doing we also face the problem of if he was still there at the end of it which he most likely would be it would take some shine off the achievement that is the aggressor Saddam Hussein still in power that is the president of the United States no longer in power there is the Prime Minister of Britain who did quite a lot to get things there there longer in power I wonder who won Saddam Hussein might claim that by surviving eating but his invasion of Kuwait ended in ignominy and his dreams of challenging Israel and dominating the Middle East turned to dust UN teams are still destroying his nuclear and biological weapons program sanctions crippling the economy all that remains is defiance as long as we are alert and observant Saddam Hussein is not a threat to his neighbors he's a nuisance he's an annoyance but he's not a threat that that we achieved it was never our objective to get Saddam Hussein indeed had we tried we still might be occupying Baghdad that would turn a great success into a very messy probable defeat it took seven months to extinguish the oil wells that burned across the deserted battle a bubble lives the Western Allies sent half a million men to war because of oil as always in history of the great powers fought to protect their interests in so doing the West forged new alliances with the Arab world paving the way for a permanent peace with Israel [Music] and walls must also be measured by what they'd invent the dictator had invaded one country and was threatening to convulse the whole of the Middle East if today Saddam Hussein is no Hitler perhaps it is because the Gulf War ensured he did not become one [Music] [Music]

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Channel: Geoff Blake

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Length: 195min 57sec (11757 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2019

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