You probably remember what you were doing when the Twin Towers were attacked, and some remember the day that Pearl Harbor was hit by surprise, but I'm sure that if asked what you were doing on the night of August 1, 1990, your reply would be a little more ambiguous than on the other dates. On that night, Iraqi forces that had been drawn up to the border of Kuwait for supposedly "routine" purposes invaded the small oil generating country and took over the capital. You also may not have felt as personally affected by this news as you would of news about a terrorist attack on New York City, but the men and women that made up the 2,048,622 man US Armed forces did. They knew that for a man to invade the world's largest oil producing nation and take over 24% of all oil collection of the world, he would clearly have to be insane. Indeed, they were correct. That man, Saddam Hussein, was not of sound mind, and his actions on the days of August 1 and 2nd of 1990 plainly support this insanity. His 140,000-man invasion of the country was a bold move for a man to make, and he knew that the US, the world's most rapid oil consuming nation, would not let it go. Over the course of that year and the next, Hussein's military incursion along with his history of broken promises and deceptive behavior led to an operation by the US known as "Desert Shield" and a war known to the world as "The Persian Gulf War". This US initiative in response to Saddam Hussein's rash decisions, known as "Desert Storm," changed the world forever, and gave the US a large hand in all Kuwaiti affairs, and is ultimately why there is still so much conflict surrounding the area. To fully understand why these events are so relevant to our time, you must start with the man, Saddam Hussein, and through further analysis of the causes and outcomes of these conflicts, it will become clear to you why the resulting changes in ...