Desert Storm Quotes

I had top-secret clearance and everything. I was working on a couple of projects that would keep me involved in Desert Storm. I was in the mix, which is scary.

While the Assads are despotic, George H.W. Bush made the father an ally in Desert Storm, and Ehud Barak offered to return to Hafez Assad the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace deal.

The Gulf War was like teenage sex. We got in too soon and out too soon.

As a 22-year Army Veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and as a Civilian Advisor to the Afghan Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, I understand both the gravity of giving the order, and the challenge of carrying it out.

We should have done more damage to the Iraqi forces before they withdrew from the Kuwaiti theater.

Make no mistake about it: Operation Desert Storm truly was a victory of good over evil, of freedom over tyranny, of peace over war.

In my day, we had mastered high-intensity conflict, which is why I think we were so successful in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and then eventually the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.

In Desert Storm, we had too many troops; in Afghanistan probably not enough for the major commitment we have made.

The magnificent army that fought in Desert Storm is a great army, and it still is a magnificent army today. But it was one we designed for the Cold War, and the Cold War has been over for ten years now.

I wanted to serve. It was Desert Storm. I thought, 'I was a rich kid, and America's been good to me.'

Desert Storm was seen by the military establishment and by some politicians as avenging Vietnam, but it left behind dangerous illusions. The victory was so decisive, and information about it so carefully managed, that the American public was never clearly informed that it was purchased at the price of approximately 100,000 Iraqi lives.

Military intervention for disarmament is the worst possible way to do it. There are times when perhaps that is the only alternative we have… in the case of the first Gulf war -- Desert Storm -- that it was the UN inspectors -- in the years after the war -- that destroyed far more weapons and far more effectively dismantled the programs for weapons of mass destruction, than that vast armada of military forces that was utilized in Desert Storm. And of course, when the UN inspectors did it -- when under UN supervision, the Iraqis destroyed these weapons themselves -- or the UN destroyed them with Iraqi cooperation -- you do not have the same kind of side effects and toxic release and other things that happened in some cases during the war. Trying to get rid of programs of concern and weapons of concern by violence is a very bad and dangerous way to do it.

Desert Storm seemingly reversed one of the principal lessons of Vietnam—namely that excessive reliance on technology in war is a recipe for disaster.

The Gulf War was finished off properly. Make no mistake about it.

I covered the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Israel for ABC News.

For Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, 267,300 reserve component service men and women were called to service.