Originally Posted by
Beowulf65
Sam,
Desert Shield and Storm were not two different events, Operation Desert Shield was when US troops were moved into Saudi Arabia on August 7, 1990. This "wholly defensive" doctrine was to be quickly abandoned. On August 8, Iraq declared parts of Kuwait to be extensions of the Iraqi province of Basra and the rest to be the 19th province of Iraq.
Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait,President Bush started to deploy US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard units to Saudi Arabia (Operation Desert Shield), while at the same time urging other countries to send their own forces to the scene. UN coalition-building efforts were so successful that by the time the fighting (Operation Desert Storm) began on January 16, 1991, twelve countries had sent naval forces, joining the regional states of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, as well as the huge array of the US Navy, which deployed six aircraft-carrier battle groups; eight countries had sent ground forces, joining the regional troops of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the seventeen heavy and six light brigades of the US Army and nine Marine regiments, with their large support and service forces; and four countries had sent combat aircraft, joining the local air forces of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the US Air Force, US Navy, and U.S. Marine aviation, for a grand total of 2,430 fixed-wing aircraft.
It went from being called Desert Shield to Desert Storm when we invaded them, nothing changed except the name. This knowledge comes from being there not listening to CNN and Wolfblitzer.