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:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“What though the traveler tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick or idle that we must sacrifice our America and today to some man’s ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand and at length a wave of the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I behold the columns of a larger
and purer temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)