Prior to the coalition force's invasion of Iraq in the first(Operation Desert Storm)war......................?

Question

.....to free Kuwait of Iraqi forces Saddam Hussein said "This is the Mother of all battles". Was he right?
(By the way, I'm a red-blooded American who proudly served as an Armor Crewman so don't get the wrong idea here) Thanks.

Answer 1

I was on the support staff of a four-star during that one, we mostly heard it called "the Mother of All Surrenders". Thanks for your service, that's vet-to-vet.

Answer 2

Of course not. The mother of all battles is very relative. Check the Kursk tank battle during WW2, trench warfare in WW1. Check the Thermopilae where 300 spartans stopped a Persian army in the thousands, Leyte gulf in the Philippines, the sinking of the Yamato and Bismarck, The battle of Midway, Stalingrad, etc... I think that any of them would qualify. Desert storm was, for all its fury and casualties, a lesson about the advantages of superior technology.

Answer 3

i don't think so. i suspect he probably thought that the coalition forces were going to wade on in all guns blazing, fortunately for him that did not happen. had they done that then probably it would have been the mother of all battles, and probably even have a fully working democratic government. ah, twists of fate. its now been 16 years since the 1st gulf war, they say it takes 10 years to form an elected democratic government; we would probably be doing business with them now!

Answer 4

To Saddam it probably was. For a dictator with power to suddenly feel he could be losing control; must have been devastating to him. Boy, I wish I could have been there when they pulled him out of that hole!!! My daughter told me Iraqis were asking her where they put Saddam and she answered, "Probably another hole in the ground. (this was after they found him).

Answer 5

This was a poorly penned rallying cry by Saddam. I believe that all he accomplished with this motto was scaring the crap out of his own soldiers. You know as well as I, they folded like a cheap deck of playing cards

Answer 6

I think he meant to say that "this is the mother of all turkey shoots".

I could be wrong though.