Operation Desert Scorpion was an American response to the crises between the United Nations and Iraq in February 1998. Sadam Hussein provoked the United Nations by refusing to live up to his obligations to allow full access to his military sites for inspection. American military units deployed to the region (Operation Desert Thunder), in support of a number of options.
Operation Desert Scorpion was a contingency plan that called for a single American division (The 24th Infantry Division), reinforced by some Marine units, to drive from Kuwait north to beyond Basra, cutting Iraq in half and hopefully provoking widespread rebellions.
This option was not carried out, as the United Nations Secretary General was able to negotiate a peaceful solution.
Famous quotes containing the words operation and/or desert:
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“There were three classes of inhabitants who either frequent or inhabit the country which we had now entered: first, the loggers, who, for a part of the year, the winter and spring, are far the most numerous, but in the summer, except for a few explorers for timber, completely desert it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only permanent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and help raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, mostly Indians, who range over it in their season.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)