Gulf war 1 - Did they do the right thing?

Flashback to the first Gulf war. Allied forces have just stormed through Kuwait routing both the Iraqi regular forces and the elite Republican guard. Iraqi forces are in a complete retreat. The Air Force has defected. Allied air power has conquered the skies and Sodamn Insane is in a very dangerous place and it looks like his power is starting to slip.

Meanwhile tucked away in a mountain far far away is a Mister Osama plotting the destruction of the United States. He won't appear on the scene for another 10 years or so and at the moment his network of islamist militants has nowhere near the noteriaty it has achived now.

Now.... Bush Sr tells the Iraqi people to rise up against Sadaam and the Shias do. This is where things change. Rather than doing nothing, Allied tanks move in to support the uprising crushing ineffectual Iraqi resitstance. Sadamm retreats to Tikrit but is cornered by an A-10 tankbuster on the way. The results are well, messy. The coalition storms to power and is greeted as liberators by a people tired of war. Or are they?

My question is had the allies invaded Iraqi during the first Gulf war, would they have encountered the resistance/insurgency that they have now? This is bearing in mind that Al queda were a relativly unknown in America/Europe and had knowhere near the clout they did then as they do now in the Islamic world. Would there still be this aura of holy war surrounding a fight against the Americans?

Or was sanctions the right idea? 10 years, millions of dead children but worth it to keep Sadaam in check?

I am interested in all views and if possible would like a Muslim viewpoint on the whole thing. I know there are a few of you out there so get posting! (Please note also, I am not some kind of war mongerer. Both choices will lead to the deaths of thousands of innocents and I understand that. What I want to know is what choice would you make and why? And yes hindsight is a wonderfull thing. Also, I wasn't sure which forum to stick this in but I chose this one because the consequences of this decision are still with us today, hence Gulf war 2, so MODS I am at your mercy)

I feel the 91 Gulf War helped US Oil interests in Quiwait(sp?). But by not invading Iraq then, the Iraq Dictator had ten years to play the embargo of little food and medicine to the Iraqi people as puinishment from Americans so I suppose the hatred of America had lot's of time to build.

I say that as the amount of US Soldiers killed there tells me the Iraqi people may not have been as forthcoming with insurgent inf to the military as they might be without the ten year embargo.

Bush Sr should have gone into Iraq I feel. He should not have stopped the War short of removing Saddam. The price of which is being applied in cost and death now.

Bin Laden had no angle on Iraq then or now I feel. Syria is the problem state and since they have been allowed to smuggle-into Iraq the major insurgent participants from wherever their from, that lack of aggression against Syria opened the door to Iran, Arabs hate any sign of weakness, and jump at any chance for advantage.

So now we all have a nuclear problem with Iran. Then North Korea started, after Bush refered to the dictaor there as a 'Pigmy'. That ended the /96 agreement for restraint of their nuclear program under Clinton.

So, all in all its all a mess now and I unfortuantely feel disaster is inevitable.

Dallas

Saddam wasn’t insane at all – he being a former CIA operative, did his due diligence and checked with the US to see if the settling of the Kuwati border dispute would even register on their radar. He was told that the US did “not have an opinion in this regional affair”.
Little did he know that his boss, former CIA head & current president, GHW Bush, was sinking in the polls like a rock in a river. A war would be just the tonic needed to service opinion polls, pay off fat cat government contractors and establish an invoice system to those said same contractors for munitions that will see non stop bombing sorties over Iraq for the next decade that were only interrupted to include new flight plans for the most recent invasion.
At the time, Al Qaeda was not really created, in term or network, by us yet. Osama & terrorism as a whole was looking at the events being engendered in Palestine & Iraq by US policy.
If Bush had backed the uprising he called for? We would have been looking at years of civil war, with no faction capable of taking the land mass the Saddam had....3 separate Iraqs. Until, the Iran backed faction was made capable &steam rolled the others, with Iran expanding its borders.
Clinton would have declared war on the new Iran-q , due to their direct military might in the face of Israel. It would have had zero EU support, due to the fact that their companies made fortunes in making the new Iran-q the world’s 4th military power, as well as suckling from the teat that was their discounted oil.
There's no holy war now, nor would there have been one then- you have a cultural one. The 1st of the 1st world's superpower is then & now revisiting the colonialism that started decades of of war, discord & misery in that part of the world.....religion is a footnote & willful distraction that takes the eye off of the rampant cronyism & illegal doings & moral abyss that are the "Allied" actions.

You seem to forget that Osama and Al-Quida were infact a very prominent factor during the first Gulf War; he was well known in the Middle East and by us as we were funding him in his attacks against the Russians in Afghanistan.

He VERY much wanted to be the one to go into Iraq because he felt it was a Muslim problem and that the US had no right to step in. So instead of funding and backing his group to go in, we sided with Saudi politics and went to war. That is the primary reason Osama started his campaign against anything American.

Actually, it was the creation of the military base right outside of Mecca ( Riyadh?). The straw that broke the OBL's back was that the US SLAUGHTERED over a quarter million Iraqi civilians in Desert Storm. The military deaths were heinous via the Highway of Death, where the Iraqi forces, retreating from Kuwait, were completely bombed & incinerated, with huge mass graves unspoken of being the only reminder, as it's been wiped from the Western mindset.

I highly suggest reading Blowback....spells it all out

I was just pointing out that OBL was infact a notable influence before the first Gulf War and should not be dismissed as a non-entity.

i remember that Osama say somthing about targeting America for helping Israel's invasion to Lebanon in 82, which means there was no turning back and that Osama was already targeting America long before the first Gulf War.

One of the reasons why was because Kuwait was slant drilling oil from Iraq.

As i recall the the story was sent live on CNN, showing Colin Powell at the UN Colin Powell. He could prove, according to sattelite images, that a huge number or Iraqi tanks was pouring into Kuwait.
According to Russian satellite photos, there was no such evidence wahtsoever.
iraqwar.org...

But then the story about how Iraqi soldiers had invaded the Kuwaiti hospitals, and 'thrown babies out of their incubators, and left on the cold floor to die', was run all over the world media. This shifted worldopinion, and the war was rolling. This story was a LIE!
www.geocities.com...
Why would Iraqi soldiers need incubators?

A stalemate and some 'news'... deja vu anyone?

Originally posted by MrBunny
I was just pointing out that OBL was infact a notable influence before the first Gulf War and should not be dismissed as a non-entity.

I agree and have read something to the same effect. In my origional post what I was trying to get across is that he wasn't the meadia mogal he is today at the time. This was pre 9/11 and he hadn't gained the noterity he has today then.

Originally posted by enslaved83

I agree and have read something to the same effect. In my origional post what I was trying to get across is that he wasn't the meadia mogal he is today at the time. This was pre 9/11 and he hadn't gained the noterity he has today then.

Ahh, true.

Deltaboy

I would hope that he was not vochal about targeting us in 82' back in 82' considering the Regan administration was supplying him up untill around 86'ish and that would just be patheticly stupid.

The early 80's are a bit fuzzy in my memory, I mean I remember the whole Iran Contra thing but not alot about the key players in the Middle East at the time.