A watchful eye was on both countries as the dispute turned into the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, which took the United Nations by surprise. The audacious move of Iraq to annex Kuwait led the United Nations to intervene and by August 9, 1990 the United Nations had declared the annexation to be invalid. The United Nations Security Council had taken a strong stance on the situation and authorized the use of force if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by midnight on January 15, 1991. (O’Hara, 2001.) President Bush said, “this will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait,” during a press conference at the White House, opening the possibility for a military solution to the conflict. (Bush, 1990.) By January 16, 1991 American forces were in full motion. The President gave orders to destroy the Iraqi border first, followed by the presidential palace, communication center and power …show more content…
The continuous battle left the Iraqi army in ruins and Kuwait was liberated when President Bush declared a cease fire on February 28, 1991. The military had never used the Patriot missile system before in defending against incoming missiles, therefore it was not designed to operate for long periods of time. Two weeks before the deadly incident, the Army received data from Israel indicating that the system was losing accuracy after eight hours of continuous operation. The Army made efforts to update the software to improve the system’s accuracy but the system modification did not reach Dhahran until after the incident on February 26 1991. After a few unfortunate incidents the Patriot units sought out various ways to collect as much data as they could so they could make further