The scene U.S. forces encountered as they pushed into Kuwait in 1991 to end the Iraqi occupation could only be described as a hellscape. Hundreds of burning oil wells set ablaze by Iraq's army had left sand sodden in an oily sludge and the skies overhead choked with thick black smoke.
As they fled, Saddam Hussein's troops looted homes, private property and state buildings. As many as 5,000 Kuwaitis were dead.
Click to see pictures of the war. (Image Courtesy: Phaidon Press Photo)
Responding to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, troops of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division deploy across the Saudi desert on during preparations prior to the Gulf War. (AP Photo)
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein speaks with Western British hostages. (AP Photo)
A U.S. Marine patrol walks across the charred oil landscape near a burning well during perimeter security patrol near Kuwait City. (AP Photo)
A poster of the Emir of Kuwait and a U.S. recruiting poster share space in a private compound, in Kuwait City. (AP Photo)
A person walks through the debris in Tel Aviv after eight Iraqi scud missiles were fired at Israel. (AP Photo)
President George Bush poses with soldiers during a stop at an air base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo)
Some Afghan mujahedeen receive training for possible gas warfare during the Gulf War at their camp in Khafji near the Saudi-Kuwait border. (AP Photo)
U.S. Marines prepare to board Chinook CH-46 helicopters during a deployment exercise in the desert of Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf crisis. (AP Photo)
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. troops in the Gulf, gazes from the window of his small jet on his way out to visit U.S. troops in the desert in Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo)
U.S. Marines located just a few miles from Kuwait, fire an ordinance at Iraqi positions inside Kuwait in eastern Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo)
A Saudi Arabian official and Saudi soldiers watch a multiple rocket launch system near the Kuwaiti border in Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo)
Oil well firemen from a U.S. company discuss the day's work while a wellhead burns out of control across a lake of crude oil in the Ahmadi oil field, Kuwait. (AP Photo)
An American Special Forces soldier is mobbed by jubilant Kuwait City residents Tuesday night, as the city was liberated from Iraq forces. (AP Photo)
Smoke from a burning oil well in Kuwait billows behind an armoured vehicle from the U.S. Marines Second Division near the Saudi-Kuwait border prior to the start of the ground war against Iraq. (AP Photo)
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