Gulf War's 100-Hour Ground War: The Left Hook and the Highway of Death

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On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein sent about 600,000 troops, 5,500 tanks and 3,000 artillery pieces into Kuwait, drawing on what was then the fourth largest army in the world after eight years of war with Iran. With the Cold War ending and the UN Security Council no longer deadlocked, George H.W. Bush assembled a coalition of more than 30 countries for Operation Desert Shield, moving over 950,000 personnel into Saudi Arabia under parallel Arab and Western command structures. Operation Desert Storm began January 17, 1991, with an air campaign using F-117 Nighthawks against radar, communications, power grids and command centers. Iraq fired Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel, killing 74 Israeli civilians in an effort to pull Israel in and split the coalition, and Patriot batteries were rushed to both countries.

After 38 days of bombing, the ground war opened February 24 with a left hook through the western desert that GPS receivers made navigable. Coalition deaths numbered 292, about half non-hostile, against estimates of 20,000 to 50,000 Iraqi dead and 80,000 to 175,000 surrendered. Air strikes on retreating columns along Highway 80 produced the Highway of Death images that factored into the 100-hour ceasefire. Retreating forces set Kuwaiti oil wells ablaze and dumped crude into the Persian Gulf, and Shia and Kurdish uprisings encouraged by Bush were crushed by helicopter gunships exempt from flight limits. Veterans later reported Gulf War illness, and the 1994 Senate Riegle Report traced Iraqi weapons programs to U.S. dual-use exports in the 1980s.

• Precision-guided munitions made up only a small fraction of the total tonnage dropped.
• The coalition destroyed more than 3,300 Iraqi tanks while losing 31.
• Extinguishing the high-pressure oil well fires took specialized teams using explosives most of a year.
• Counting the crushed uprisings, total Iraqi losses are estimated at 142,000 to over 200,000 people.
• Suspected causes of Gulf War illness include oil fire smoke, depleted uranium dust, experimental nerve agent antidotes and low-level sarin and cyclosarin released by bombed depots.