Assessing Desert Shield’s Power Cocktail 30 Years On

Cpl. Ray Penna guards the camp perimeter with an M-16A2 rifle during an Imminent Thunder training exercise, a part of Operation Desert Shield in 1991. DOD via Getty Images

Commentary

On Aug. 2, 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard tanks and mechanized infantry invaded oil-rich Kuwait, igniting a war that would have several names, among them Kuwait War and Persian Gulf War. Though the war’s major combat operation, Desert Storm, didn’t begin until January 1991, Desert Storm would become the pop nickname for the conflict, all but erasing from media talking-head memory its predecessor, Operation Desert Shield.