
President Bush announces the start of the ground war in Kuwait, and why it was necessary. This video comes from one of my VHS tapes of the 1991 gulf war. Desert Storm: The Land War By 24 February 1991, airpower had weakened Iraq's land forces in Kuwait to the point where the UN commander, General Schwarzkopf, felt ready to launch a land offensive. Early that morning, UN land forces attacked along a broad front from the Persian Gulf to Rafha on the Iraqi‐Saudi border. This attack had two principal thrusts: a massive, highly mobile "left hook" around and through Iraqi positions to the west of Kuwait to envelop the elite Republican Guard; and a thrust straight through Iraq's defenses along the Kuwaiti border designed to fix the forward Iraqi divisions. The "left hook" was carried out by a mix of US, British, and French armored and airborne forces. The armored VII Corps deployed four armored divisions, one of them British, for the main thrust. Its western flank was protected by the US XVIII Airborne Corps, composed of three US divisions—the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Air Mobile, and the 24th Infantry (Mechanized)—and the French 6th Light Armored Division. They advanced toward the Iraqi cities of Salman, west of Kuwait, and Nasiriya on the Euphrates River, and attacked in an arc to the northeast toward the main routes of communication leading north from Kuwait toward Basra in Iraq. French forces led the attack toward the Iraqi lines of communication along the Euphrates. US <b>...</b>
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