ed, not to mention that the primary objective (sack and pillage) was nothing that the US wanted to be a part of. To the contrary, the US immediately sided with Kuwait, and warned Hussein that there would be severe consequences if he did not withdraw his troops. Now, Iraq was in a tricky position. Because the US and other European allies were the main source of Baghdad’s arms, technology, weapons and seed stock – in other words Baghdad’s power (Bennis 2) – Hussein was faced with a big decision to make. Hussein’s hunger for Kuwait’s outweighed his fear of losing the US as an ally and gaining them as an adversary, and he continued his invasion. While the US military’s physical presence held the Iraqi military partly at bay, the political leaders were hard at work in Washington. In 1990, The United Nations (UN) Security Council made public a trade embargo, which the US came up with and that the UN deemed a good plan. The restrictions on Iraqi trade were meant to reduce the quality of life in Iraq, and hopefully cause the nation’s public to overthrow Hussein. The embargo that the UN Security Council passed in 1990 froze all exports and almost all imports. The sale of oil was forbidden, and all import exchanges with Iraq were suspended as well. Even medicine and food imports were prohibited at the start of the sanctions, but were eventually allowed. The sanctions were set in place only a few days after Hussein’s army invaded Kuwait, and they were declared at their introduction to be lifted when Hussein withdrew his forces from Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm opened in January of 1991. The US, under the authorization of president Bush, sent thousands of troops over to the Persian Gulf to stand in the way of any and all Iraqi soldiers in the region of Kuwait. By land, air and sea the bullets flew, the missiles screamed and the bombs dropped for three months - all the while the economic sancti...
