Question:
When President Bush drew a line in the sand with the 82nd Airborne Division's deployment to the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, back in August 1990—some thought it a suicidal mission--what would have been the American reaction if Saddam destroyed the first Brigade to arrive in theater? Is that something Cheney and Schwarzkopf could have absorbed as leaders?
Yours Truly Answers:
The “line in the sand” was, in the president’s rhetoric, a warning to the Iraqi dictator not to do something he already was not going to do, that is, to invade Saudi Arabia. Still, to back up his words, the president dispatched the 82nd Airborne.
The lead elements of the 82nd faced the early possibility of doing battle with eleven Iraqi Army divisions arrayed in Kuwait—“five armored; two mechanized; and four infantry. Of these, one armored and one mechanized were positioned opposite the Saudi border.”[1] This was an “insufficient” force with which to invade Saudi Arabia;[2] however, there was for a time a very real possibility that this force, or elements thereof, could have tangled with the first U.S. forces that arrived in theater. Those forces were indeed at significant risk, or so it was believed at the time.
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| According to its Facebook page, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team "Falcons" is the only organization in the US Army to have served as a Light Infantry, Glider Infantry, and Parachute Infantry Regiment. |
The first U.S. ground forces to arrive in theater were the lead elements of the 82nd’s “division ready brigade,” or DRB, which happened to be the 2nd Airborne Infantry Brigade out of Fort Bragg. The first stick landed at Dhahran on 8 August 1990, seven days after the Iraqis invaded Kuwait, with the remainder deploying over the next four to five days.
The 2nd Brigade’s mission was to “protect the airfield and ports American forces needed to deploy into Saudi Arabia.”[3] These facilities were located in and around Dhahran, an oil town on the eastern Saudi Arabian shore, close to Dammam’s port facilities and the village of Khobar, about 300 kilometers south of the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. The headquarters of the Saudi ARAMCO oil company is in Dhahran. The U.S. Consolate serving “Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the Trucial States (Qatar, UAE and Oman)” also located there.[4]
As a DRB, 2nd Brigade was comprised of three infantry battalions, an artillery battalion equipped with 105mm Howitzers, a forward area support team composed of medical, supply and transport units from the Division Support Command, a combat engineer company, and armor company equipped with M551 “antiquated”[5] Sheridan armored reconnaissance vehicles, an air defense battery, and a communications platoon. When an infantry brigade assumed the DRB mission, so did its supporting units.”[6]
Left unsaid was the DRB’s other mission—
