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Liberating Kuwait
Reprinted from U.S. Army Intelligence Agency, How They Fight: Desert Shield Order of Battle Handbook (1990) Diagram of an Iraqi company subsection of a triangular strongpoint.
tional war over Kuwait, it ended the year reasonably confident that its plans and defenses would lead to a negotiated settlement and that it could prevail against the untested American military forces and unstable Coalition facing them. Saddam declared to his staff in November 1990 that “as long as our blood is less, as long as our breath lasts longer, and at the end we can make our enemy feel
incompetent.” He was certain that it would be a long war, and that a long war would play to Iraq’s strengths and the United States’ weaknesses.42
Planning a Storm Planning for an offensive against Iraq actually began in August. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Kuwait, General Schwarzkopf asked the Air
