The Invasion

At 2:00 a.m. on August 2, 1990, the night sky over Kuwait City flickered with tracer fire. Four divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard — 100,000 soldiers and 700 tanks — had crossed the Kuwaiti border and were sweeping south in darkness. The Kuwaiti army, 16,000 strong and partially mobilized, was overwhelmed within hours.

By dawn, Iraqi T-72 tanks were in the streets of Kuwait City. The emir fled by helicopter. By noon, the conquest of a sovereign nation was complete.

Saddam Hussein had gambled that the world would accept a fait accompli. Iraq had emerged from its eight-year war with Iran drowning in debt — Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had bankrolled much of that war and showed little inclination to forgive the loans.

Kuwait was also, in Saddam's telling, 'slant-drilling' into Iraq's Rumaila oil field and depressing global oil prices with overproduction. He had amassed his forces on Kuwait's border for weeks. American diplomatic signals were mixed at best — Ambassador April Glaspie's now-famous July 25 meeting told Saddam the U.S.

had 'no opinion' on Arab-Arab border disputes.

The reaction was swift and unequivocal. The UN Security Council condemned the invasion within hours and imposed sweeping economic sanctions. President George H.W. Bush declared the invasion 'will not stand.' Saudi Arabia — watching Iraqi tanks massing on its northern border — agreed to allow Western forces onto its soil.

Within days, the 82nd Airborne Division was landing at Dhahran: a thin 'speed bump' that was all that stood between Saddam and the Saudi oil fields. Operation Desert Shield had begun.

For the 400,000 Kuwaitis who remained — and the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who could not flee — the Iraqi occupation was a nightmare. Iraqi soldiers looted hospitals of medical equipment, stripped the national museum, emptied banks, and committed systematic atrocities against the civilian population.

Kuwait, one of the wealthiest nations per capita on earth, was being stripped bare. The world watched, and built an army.