Would Iraq have fallen so quickly in 1991?

[Murpheeee]

Supposing the US (with or without coalition) had decided to press on into Irag in 1991.
Do you think the government woudl have fallen as quickly as it did?

On the one hand, the Iraqi army were on the back foot retreating, but US did not have same weapon capabilities etc.....

Thoughts?

 

[ConclamoLudus]

I don't think it would have been AS easy, at least compared to today. But I don't think that it would have been too bad. I heard something about how he had a contingency plan to launch anything he had at Israel if we kept pressing though. That may have been one big Saddam bluff though.

 

[Zebo]

Yes. Probably Faster because the Iraqi Forces were even more dispersed in 1991. Arabs have never been known for their ability to wage war sorry. May sound bad but it's a hostorical fact.

 

[Tiger]

It would have been quick.
When we did the end run through the desert we cut off 80% of what was left of the Iraqi army at the time.
Remember the highway of death? It's too bad the UN mandate at the time didn't allow us to get Saddam then. Could have saved some time and money for us and some heartache for the Iraqi people.

 

[jjones]

Really impossible to say because once the ground war started in the Gulf War, the Iraqis collapsed pretty quickly; however, the practically overnight fall of Baghdad just recently would be hard to beat.

 

[ElFenix]

popular uprising would have been more likely then, i think.

 

[Tom]

I think it would have been faster and smarter.

 

[Nitemare]

Stormin Norman would have laid the smack down on Baghdad

 

[etech]

I think I will disagree with the popular sentiment here and say it would have been more difficult in 91 to remove Saddam. The Iraqi army than was larger and though much of it was caught in Kuwait much of the Republican Guard was still in Iraq. I believe that back then they would have put up more of a fight and not just melted away as they seem to have done now.

The Iraqi troops in 91 were still veterans of the Iran war and better trained to fight. Their equipment had not eroded as much due to 12 years of sanctions.

 

[MedicBob]

etech,

You make some good points except most of the Iraqi army was conscripts and were surrendering in hugh groups, our small group stopped counting at 500 and just pointed them South and told them to keep walking.

Their equipment was in so so shape then also. Lack of basic maint. that required very little in parts. Things like changing oil, greasing and adjusting track tension wasn't done on a regular basis then or now. The vehicles we captured were in shambles and we spent a significant amount of our "free time" to get those things road ready to move them onto ships as trophies.

The Republican Guard Divisions were a problem and would have been a somewhat tough nut to crack, but had been under constant fire for weeks. Just looking at the highway they retreated on shows how much dissarray they were in. Probably about 20% of the vehicles were military, the rest were stolen and were loaded up with stolen goods. They were too interested in getting something for themselves then posing a serious threat to UN forces. If they got their Sh1t together they would have been a problem.

 

[Alistar7]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
popular uprising would have been more likely then, i think.

it was, and since we did not remove Sadam we got very little help from the citizens this time around, can't say I blame them.

The night before Baghdad fell armed residents did drive out the iraqi paramilitary in one quarter of the city, residents of Basra also rose up against the Iraqi military.

 

[HappyGamer2]

I think it would have been tougher in 91, but then again we had more people/countries helping us 91, but if it was same/same 91 would have been tuffer

 

[Ophir]

Taking Baghdad in '91 would have caused a slaughter in the streets w/ many civilian casualties. Precision bombing was still in its infancy and there were still many mishaps. There was no way we could systematiccally decimated the city in that way without incurring much collateral damage. Though an uprising would have helped tremendously.

Also, at that point Saddam may have done anything to maintain a grip - a chemical/biological attack would have been very likely.

 

[syzygy]

Supposing the US (with or without coalition) had decided to press on into Irag in 1991.

saddam's downfall would have been blink away.

14 of his 18 states were in rebellion in the wake of the kuwaiti retreat. not only were there thousands of deserters
but the assaults against the state were initiated - at least in the southern city of bsra - by a now legendary (name
unknown ) tank commander who turned his gun against a large public portrait of saddam and blasted away.

what receives so little public attention is how the u.s. gov't miserably failed to support the rebellion. beyond doling out cheap rhetoric and empty promises, they did literally nothing.

it didn't take long to realize their assumptions about a quick iraqi coup d'etat were grossly over-estimated that the
rebellions in the south and north were crushed by saddam's republican guards, who survived the kuwait mess, more or less, intact. if i recall correctly, all the republican guard divisions were at least at 80% strength following the retreat and
redeployment.

 

[WhiteKnight77]

Originally posted by: Ophir
Precision bombing was still in its infancy and there were still many mishaps.

Actually precision weapons first made their debut in Vietnam. The were refined to what we saw in use during Desert Storm. They were also used in Panama (first taste of combat for the F-117 also) when we went after Noriega. They matured to what we saw used this time and in bigger numbers. This time around F-14s even carried them. For the most part some of the weapons used during Desert Storm did see combat for the first time.

 

[Vic]

I still don't know why we didn't do it then. The US attacking Iraq is so one-sided it's not even funny, like a high school senior beating up a kindergartner. What was the score in '91... something like 300 US dead to 150,000 Iraqi soldiers?

 

[orion7144]

I don't think it would have been much different. When we started the "Ground War" (I was there), in less than 24hrs a majority of our forward troops were pretty close to Bagdad. Thats when they (other Bush administration) called us off since we had gotten so close and they did not expect it so quickly. We had 1000's of Iraqi troops surendering to AV8 Jump jets at a time. The long air assault killed all of their supply lines and most of them were starving.