The Gulf War

The Gulf war originally started between Iraq and Kuwait. These two countries had a border dispute over the Persian Gulf Islands for many years but had never let it elevate to a level as bad as the Gulf War.

In 1979 the president of Iraq was replaced by Saddam Hussein and was automatically placed into war with Iran until 1989. In March 1989 Hussein signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia formalizing their border and the offered Kuwait the same agreement. Kuwait was afraid of destroying the new relations with Iran and refused to sign an agreement with Iraq. Saddam faced an economic crisis do to the over pumping of some Gulf States. He was mad that Kuwait exceeded the OPEC quota and sold its oil below the agreed floor price. The Iraqi government also said that Kuwait was stealing their oil. The Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz claimed Kuwait was illegally pumping too much oil from the Iraqi side of the border. Kuwait denied and stated the same allegations on Iraq.

Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990. The Kuwaitis 20,000 man army was no match for Iraq's 100,000-man force and lost there capital in under a day. Within the first week of the attacks the UN security counsel called for the immediate withdrawal of all Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. President Bush imposed an embargo and tried to get the rest of the world to except it. Iraq did not comply with the demands set by the UN and the Gulf war started.

By the second week the United States was sending 40,000 troops to Saudi Arabia and fifty war ships to the Gulf. In January the number of US and Coalition troops was over 500,000. The military coalition consisted of thirty-five countries. On January 16 coordinated air strikes began with Stealth bombers against targets in Kuwait and Iraq including Baghdad. The allies launched a ground assault on February 24, within two days The Iraqi military was collapsing. On the 26th Kuwait said that we had driven Iraq out of the capital. The allies bombed the retreating Iraqis for forty hours.

The Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz flew to New York to work out a cease fire, and accepted the U.N. resolutions including having to surrender its claims to Kuwait. On January 17th hours before the cease fire US air force bombers dropped 5,000 pound bombes on a command bunker outside of Baghdad in an attempt to kill Sadam Hussein.

The war was financed by counties that could not send troops to fight. More than fifty three billion dollars were pledged and received for the war effort. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were some of the largest donors to the war effort and Switzerland also contributed to the allies.

Loses from the war consisted of 148 Americans with 24 percent of them killed by friendly fire and land mines that were not marked after the cease fire agreement. The Iraqi army lost 4,000 tanks, 7 helicopters and 240 airplanes.

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