Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom Recordings

Now that the Cold War was all but over, a new world threat was emerging; instability in the Middle East.  And the biggest issue within the Middle East was that of Iraq.

In August of 1990, Saddam Hussein had ordered Iraqi troops to move into their tiny neighbor, Kuwait, and take over the land and oil it possessed.  The United States government, led by President George HW Bush began a campaign known as Operation Desert Shield, offering Saddam Hussein every option to withdrawal from Kuwait or risk all out war by air and on the ground.

Saddam refused every opportunity and on January 16, 1991, the United States was at war with Iraq.  This campaign was known as Operation Desert Storm.  And after 100 hours of ground fighting, the Iraqis were driven from Kuwait.  The war was over.

But through the 1990s, Iraq was still a strongman threat in the Middle East.  President Bill Clinton even bombed them in December 1998 when an impeachment vote was to take place in the House of Representatives.  Many critics had accused him of wagging the dog.

In 1999, before he was the Republican Party Nominee for President in 2000, Governor George W. Bush sat down with a ghost writer, Mickey Herskowitz  to talk about his campaign autobiography; A CHARGE TO KEEP.  Bush said in this recording, "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a great commander-in-chief.  My father had all of this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he waisted it.  If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it.  I'm going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."  In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush declared Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the "Axis of Evil."

Throughout 2002, the administration went around the nation and before the world assembly of nations; the United Nations to plead their case for needing to go to war with Iraq.  The reason being that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.  Just before the Midterm Elections in 2002, members of Congress like Senator Joe Biden, Senator John Kerry, and Senator Hillary Clinton voted with the president on the issue of Iraq. 

In the beginning of 2003, the United States gave Iraq every opportunity to get the WMDs out of Iraq.  President Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein.  Saddam Hussein declined.  In March 2003, the United States delivered shock and awe on Iraq.  It was the first time in our history that the United States had attacked a sovereign nation who did not provoke us, except in theory in relationship to the September 11, 2001 Attack.

By May 2003, President Bush, under the banner of "Mission Accomplished" aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln declared that major combat fighting in Iraq was over.  By December, Saddam Hussein was captured in a spider hole, tried, and put to death in December 2006.

Even with combat fighting over, the war dragged on for another eight years when President Barack Obama drew down the troops and ending the war.  But, our involvement may have caused instability in the Middle East as new groups like ISIS began coming up.

The contemporary experts will argue about the reason for Operation Enduring Freedom, but the purpose of this collection is to remember these two wars with Iraq and remember the brave men and women who served in them.