Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led 1991 Operation Desert Storm, dead at 78

[cupper]

I read somewhere that on of the biggest things that stuck in his craw about how it ended was giving the Iraqis the use of their helo's only to have them used against the Southern Opposition uprising. Had they continued to full capitulation, this would not have been an issue.

 

[tomahawk6]

The carnage that the USAF wrought on the fleeing Iraqi Army is what forced a premature conclusion to DS.

 

[cupper]

The carnage that the USAF wrought on the fleeing Iraqi Army is what forced a premature conclusion to DS.

When I was doing a co-op stint with the CE section at Cornwallis during university, I was living on base. I had the opportunity to borrow a DVD from an MWO who was in theater just after the Gulf I. It was a DVD made by one of the troops as a momento of the deployment. It had the usual ritual halal preparation of a goat for a meal, surgical amputation of a leg after a AP mine blast, and so forth.

It also contained footage taken from a low level overflight of the "Highway of Death". What stood out to me was that the brief clips you saw on the evening news didn't even begin to give an accurate depiction of what really happened. Mile after mile after mile of burnt out vehicles of every type imaginable (both civy and military) with bizarre piles of loot scattered amongst them. The footage went on for about 15 minutes, and only covered a small portion of the road.

When they described it like shooting fish in a barrel they weren't kidding. I can understand why they would not want that visual out there for the world to see.

 

[tomahawk6]

Funeral and burial at West Point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Pku-0mQYo