Kuwait Liberated: Coalition Victory Ends Gulf War

President George H.W. Bush appeared on television at 9:02 p.m. on February 27, 1991, and declared that "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated, and our military objectives are met." The announcement came exactly one hundred hours after coalition ground forces had crossed into Iraq and Kuwait, and it marked the end of the most lopsided conventional military victory since World War II. The ground campaign had been a masterpiece of deception and maneuver. While coalition forces made a frontal assault into Kuwait, the main blow came far to the west, where American and British armored divisions executed a massive flanking movement through the Iraqi desert — the "left hook" that General Norman Schwarzkopf had planned for months. Iraqi commanders, convinced the coalition would attempt an amphibious landing, had positioned their forces to defend the Kuwaiti coast. By the time they realized the main attack was coming from their undefended western flank, entire divisions were encircled. Iraqi resistance varied wildly. Republican Guard units fought hard in several engagements, particularly at the Battle of 73 Easting, where American tanks destroyed an Iraqi brigade in a sandstorm. But tens of thousands of conscripts, starved and demoralized by weeks of air bombardment, surrendered in such numbers that advancing units could not process them. Some Iraqi soldiers surrendered to unmanned drones and journalist crews. Coalition casualties for the entire ground war totaled 148 killed in action; Iraqi military deaths numbered in the tens of thousands, though precise figures remain disputed. Bush's decision to halt at one hundred hours was driven by a combination of military calculation and political concern. The images from the "Highway of Death" had made international headlines, and Arab coalition partners opposed marching on Baghdad. The ceasefire left Saddam Hussein in power, his Republican Guard partially intact, and his helicopter fleet operational — assets he immediately turned against Shia and Kurdish uprisings. The swift military triumph produced an ambiguous political outcome that would shadow American policy in the region for the next decade.