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Saddam Hussein: "...confident that we will eventually win victory. The mother of battles
is our great battle of victory and martyrdom." US President George Bush: "We learned this
morning that Saddam has now launched a 'scorched earth' policy against Kuwait, anticipating
perhaps that he will now be forced to leave. He is wantonly setting fires to and destroying
the oil wells, the oil tanks, the export terminals and other installations of that small country.
Indeed, they are destroying the entire oil production system of Kuwait."
As the oil wells began to burn, so began the inevitable countdown to Operation Desert Storm.
Once Iraq's President Saddam Hussein had decided to destroy Kuwait's oil industry, never mind
his defiance of United Nation's resolutions to withdraw unconditionally, then the Allied
forces lined up in Saudi Arabia were bound to get the order to advance.
The burning of the oilfields had little military significance but its long term effect on the
ecology of the region was incalculable. Allied leaders saw Saddam's decision to burn
the oilfields as a last defiant fling before their land forces opened the battle to drive
him out of Kuwait. Action was only hours away. So began the biggest concerted land attack
since the Second World War. So great was the fire power on land, and in
the air, that in just a hundred hours the Iraqi Army was defeated and Kuwait was handed
back to its people.