Most of this was fake news propagated by the PR firm (Hill & Knowlton) hired by the Kuwaiti Royal family in exile in Jeddah. There were also stories of newborn infants being killed yanking them from incubators. It was a well-organized propaganda effort. I still have a few "Free Kuwait" tee shirts. The Iraqi troops did kill and kidnap Kuwaitis. Mostly, they were involved in looting Kuwaiti homes. Most of the vehicles in the "Mile of Death" were stuffed with loot stolen by Iraqi troops who abandoned the cars. There were not many Iraqi casualties in the "Mile of Death." They had been abandoned before being struck by our aircraft.
There was an expert in Texas,Red Adair, who was tasked to put the fires out,he did.
Something of a myth. I attended a US briefing of our US ambassadors in Saudi and Kuwait about the oil fires. The initial estimate by Adair and his group was that it would take years to put out the oil fires. The Kuwaitis were very unhappy with that estimate and decided to open up competitive bidding to see who could do it the fastest since the Kuwaiti economy is so dependent on oil revenue. A Hungarian group came up with the solution that put out the fires much faster than Adair. They mounted jet aircraft engines on earth movers and literally blew out the fires. It was done in months rather than years.
Wow thanks so much for straightening that out!No wonder I got it wrong.My source was NYT,should have figured it out.
They abducted several hundred Kuwaiti citizens and refused to return them- mainly from families which had historic land claims Saddam Hussein found inconvenient. A mass grave containing hundreds of them was found 50 miles west of Baghdad and documents were found that at least a few of the abducted Kuwaitis survived to late 2000 when a guard was caught photographing them and was handed over for investigation an punishment, which was probably fatal but of which there’s no record.
One of the terms for lifting sanctions was the return of these prisoners, along with a requirement to return POWs from the earlier war with Iran, but the regime could not come clean about when these people died or how because it had murdered most of them over the years following the imposition of sanctions. The British found hundreds of the missing POWs from the IranIraq war in a warehouse after the invasion.
The regime was also holding an American college student in Abu Ghraibh who had been detained on a visit with relatives in the mid to late 90s and was later freed in 2003 by invading US forces.