Operation Desert Storm

[Shek]

began 20 years ago

[Red Seven]

I remember very well the critics, armchair generals and media pundits in the weeks leading up to the commencement of action, predicting that our tanks and helos would breakdown in the sand, the coalition would suffer 10,000 casualties etc...

There haven't been many wars since WW2 that can be said to have been "good" wars, but this probably rates pretty close. It wasn't perfect by any means, especially our failure to support the northern and southern uprisings that we had encouraged (a dark postscript indeed) but in terms of execution, well done.

I had a civilian association with the war from Tampa. One of my interesting personal memories was a phone conversation, at the behest of my superiors, that I had with Benjamin Netanyahu, then the minority leader, which he had to break off abruptly to don a gasmask due to an incoming Scud missile attack. The interesting part is that we were monitoring Radio Israel on the shortwave in our office and heard the Scud attack warning broadcast in Tampa before the sirens went off in Tel Aviv--which, if memory serves, was his location at the time.