IN THE recent BBC series, on the Gulf War, Baroness Thatcher observed that she and President George Bush, in power when the war started, are now both gone from the political scene, while President Saddam Hussein has survived.
It is generally claimed that his survival is due to a large personal bodyguard and his murderous ruthlessness.
Perhaps so, but an opponent of Saddam has told this writer of the Iraqi leader's popularity. He frequently mingles with the people, despite the rumoured presence of the CIA, Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency), and Iranian and Iraqi death squads. Television footage shows cheering crowds, but these could, of course, be stage managed.
Research and production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons would indicate that Iraq had a sound (if misused) educational system. Education for women seems to have well developed there are women architects and engineers in Iraq an unusual occurrence in that region.
There were also other indications of advancement Christian churches clearly sign posted and health care programmes reported to be good.
Over the years vast sums were spent in an unbalanced way on the armed forces. A large ground army with excellent military engineers was able to build enormously strong field fortifications on the Soviet model. However, the air force, adequate against Iran, could not cover the ground troops, let alone mount an attempt to challenge US air superiority.
Without air cover the Iraqis were "reconnaissance blind". The tanks could not manoeuvre and the artillery, however well concealed, could not raise its gun barrels without attracting rapid air attack.
Gen Norman Schwarzkopf, the overall allied commander, moved thousands of tanks and men for a flank attack, safe in the knowledge that the Iraqis did not know what was happening.
Modern Iraq's peculiar history should have taught Saddam about air power. Sir Henry Wilson, as chief of the British Imperial General Staff, wrote in 1921 "Supposing we put Feisal on the throne, and supposing we try and keep him there by bombing any recalcitrant Arab villages who cock a snook at him ." And bombed they were, especially the Kurdish villages.
So Saddam grew up in a world in which aerial bombing of the Kurds had been a recent norm. A client king and prime minister ran the country under British tutelage.
They were both assassinated in 1959 before Saddam emerged eventually from a coup. He has ruled Iraq ever since.
After the invasion of Kuwait the Iraqi military engineers built defence lines similar to the deeply echeloned Soviet lines for the defence of the Kursk area in 1943. The Germans only managed to penetrate the Soviet defences at immense cost in men and tanks.
Saddam seemed to hope for even more the attrition would cause a bloody stalemate, with calls from troop contributing nations for a negotiated settlement and a halt to the fighting.
But the Russians had powerful air forces at Kursk. By contrast, Saddam's defences were easily overflown, photographed and attacked.
Bombing and the use of fuel air weapons which burn oxygen from the air made the defences uninhabitable ruins full of dead troops even before the "mother of all battles", of which Saddam spoke, had begun.
There was another factor often forgotten Iraq was war weary after an eight year conflict against Iran. Civilian and military morale were low.
The open terrain did not help. Tanks dug into scrapes in the desert were easy targets. Because command and control communications were destroyed Iraqi aircraft made few efforts to challenge allied air supremacy.
Saddam faced the same dilemma as President Gamel Abdel Nasser after the Israeli preemptive air attacks before the Six Day War in 1967. Nasser had ordered his surviving aircraft and pilots to upper Egypt, out of easy range of Israeli air attacks. The aim was to preserve them for the future and to maintain an instructional cadre.
Iraq had no such sanctuaries. Consequently the astonishing decision was taken to send pilots and aircraft to Iran. With the Iran-Iraq war so recently over, Saddam could hardly have hoped that these very modern aircraft would be returned.
The allied air attacks started on January 17th, 1991, some 51/2 months after Kuwait was invaded. In that interval the allies had built up their military strength and political legitimacy.
The Americans had moved meticulously through United Nations procedures. Experts may cavil here and there, but anyone teaching the UN Charter provisions on "the maintenance of international peace and security" can show that the UN resolutions of that time are models as to how the Charter should be followed.
However, while the allies had gained UN legitimacy for their actions, the forces used in the Desert Storm operation were not under UN control.
Up to the end efforts continued to search for a peaceful solution but attempts at peaceful solutions were brushed aside by Saddam. Loopholes for extricating himself were available but Saddam, dreaming of winning a great battle against a casualty shy US army, ignored them all.
In these moments before "annihilation's waste" he calmly contemplated the destruction of his country and all that had been achieved in education, construction and welfare and still he refused to back down.
SADDAM was looking back to the Vietnam War, with demoralised US conscripts and inadequate officers, the failure of support at home, the domino theory illusions and false briefings which undermined the support of the media and he hoped for a reprise.
Gen Schwarzkopf has described his shame about Vietnam in his memoirs. Gen Colin Powell in his own memoirs gives a powerful summary of what he calls "the war for the one size fits all rationale of anti communism, which was only a partial fit in Vietnam".
Saddam had no idea of the self reforming capabilities of the US army. With conscription ended and a promotion system that brought the Schwarzkopfs and Powells to the top, he was on a loser if he hoped for another Vietnam.
The air war did not force a victory but it ensured that the Iraqi army was unable to fight a ground war.
Hindsight and the recent BBC series have presented the ceasefire as premature. But the memoirs of Gens Schwarzkopf, Powell, Sir Peter de Ia Billiere (of Britain) and Khaled bin Sultan (the Saudi commander) all agree that the action was correct.
A US targeting officer quietly admitted on the BBC programme that an air raid shelter in Baghdad had been hit, causing heavy civilian casualties. This was repeatedly denied during the war, so it is remembered.
The Royal Air Force made a similar mistake and admitted it immediately. Now no one remembers it.