"I knew that the Iraqis could overrun the Saudi oil region in a week."     (Gen. H. Norman Schwarkzkopf)

"If Saddam had any tactical sense at all, he would have come down the east coast and taken over all those oil fields. There is nothing we could have done about it. It was the general assumption that he would do that. I was amazed that he didn't."        (Lt. Col. Keith Trumbull)                                                                                  

"When the ground war kicked off there was no question that i wanted to get even with them. They dragged me eight thousand miles away from my wife and kids and i wanted to make them pay. If they would have let me fly five times a night, i would have flown five times a night."   (Capt. Bill Millonig)

"We had quickly found that the Coalition air forces could not deal with mobile Scuds as easily as they had supposed: bad weather was one factor in the enemy's favour, but it also became apparent that the Iraqis were most skilful at concealing launchers. To a pilot flying at ten thousand feet, a missile in its horizontal, travelling attitude looked just like an oil tanker and, if it was parked under a motorway bridge, a favourite hiding place, it could not be seen at all by satellites or surveillance aircraft; yet it could be run out, set up and launched in only twenty minutes. Then, even if surveillance satellites pin-pointed its position from the heat of a launch, its erector-trailer would have disappeared again by the time an aircraft could be directed on to the spot.                                                         

So, from information-gathering, deception and offensive action in general, we hastily switched the SAS's aim, as Norman [Schwarzkopf] put it, to 'Scuds, Scuds and Scuds again', so vitally important did it seem to close down the attacks on Israel.    (Peter de la Billiere, Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War, 1992).

"They have fought for centuries, and they are going to keep right on fighting," said a weapon systems officer. "My  kids will probably be flying strike eagles in the same damn desert."

Recommended Books :

Strike Eagle : Flying the F-15E in the gulf war, William L. Smallwood.

Warthog : Flying the A-10 in the gulf war, William L. Smallwood.

CNN : War in the Gulf, F. Clifton Berry, Jr.

Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War, Peter de la Billiere, Harper Collins, 1992.