The biggest threat I remember was we were very sure Saddam had chemical weapons (mostly because we sold them to him previously, but I digress). So we had to carry gas masks and did chemical attack drills alot. We also were forced to take many shots including small pox and an experimental anthrax shot. Many of my friends have medical conditions they believe are related to those shots.
Isn't shock and awe designed to strike fear and terror in the hearts and minds of the populace? When you bomb bridges, railroads and vital energy infrastructure, the civilians are the ones who suffer the most.
You don't even have to target military sites when the starving people get rid of the "dictator" for you.
But you got that sweet black gold, so who the f*ck cares, right?
The uprising happened during the first war, but Bush I decided that he’d rather keep Sadam in power and that Kuwait’s oil was enough…
Per the Wikipedia article on the invasion and campaign being referenced, no this was not the intent:
> In practice, U.S. plans envisioned simultaneous air and ground assaults to incapacitate the Iraqi forces quickly [...] would allow them to attack the heart of the Iraqi command structure and destroy it in a short time, and that this would minimize civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Opening_...
The real impact turned out ... a bit different than this claimed strategy
I heard the banner was pre-planned by the ship as a celebration for the completion of the cruise, but then it was prominent in the photo ops and Bush got attacked as though he were celebrating victory in Iraq.
Curious on thoughts from someone who was there, or if you all even had opinions about it afterwards.
It could be that the ship's leadership wanted something like that (they are politicians too). But at least in my squadron we were all furious the president was coming because we had been out at sea for the longest nuclear and F-14 cruise of all time (10 months) and we just wanted to go home to our families but now we are delayed another week for a political stunt and have to spend the next two weeks cleaning the ship in preparation.
Pretty sure this is the answer lol...
Also, didn't we have airbases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? Why were we relying on carrier aircraft for bombing Bagdad when we could have been using F-15s and F-16s?
He/she isn't concluding that, they are repeating what they were told at the time.
Yes, I believe Al Jaber Kuwait had already constructed one of the largest post-Vietnam expeditionary airfields* with multiple US squadrons (including F/A-18s) present before the war officially began.
* "Expeditionary Airfields (EAFs) are portable airfields that can be constructed, used, broken down after the completion of a mission and moved to another site for re-use."[1]
This might be just F-14 bravado, of course, but I do also remember that like the second week of "shock and awe" (the initial Iraq campaign bombing) they stopped all F-14 flights for the same reasons. F-14s were trouncing the sorties of the F-18s, even though we were one squadron vs four or five of their squadrons, because we were the only jets capable of actually reaching Bagdad from the carrier and we were able to convert our bombs to "smart bombs" much faster (F-14s break a lot more so our techs were more skilled).