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borders with Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
    In 1961, Kuwait became independent. At no time in the modern era had Kuwait been part of Iraq.
    Nor had it been hostile. Kuwait was a close ally of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988. The country gave or loaned Iraq a great deal of money as well as strategic support. Leftover debts from the war were one of the reasons for friction with Saddam’s government at the end of the 1980s. But these were never more than a pretext for Saddam. He saw an opportunity to do many things by annexing Kuwait besides skipping out on money owed.
    Kuwait had oil revenues that he coveted. Kuwait City was a modern trading port, which would give Iraq much more access to world trade and, not coincidentally, bring the regime additional money. Conquering Kuwait would make Saddam appear grand and accomplished to his people. It would also take their minds off the long and senseless war that had dwindled down to an inconclusive close a few years before. And what would the world care about Kuwait?
    While I knew there would be trouble as soon as I heard the news, a lot of my neighbors saw things differently. Kuwait was an opportunity. To them, the invasion was a chance to rip off Kuwait. I remember seeing cars loaded down with loot: televisions, household items. There were suddenly a lot of new cars in the neighborhood—even a Chevy Caprice. The classic American automobile became a status symbol for a short while in some parts of Iraq.
    Let me not say that everything was stolen. I don’t know. Maybe some were purchased. But certainly the prices must have been very low compared to what they would have been before the invasion.
    Meanwhile, Saddam filled our airwaves with proclamations that Kuwait belonged to Iraq, and that it was only just that we reclaim our territory. The actual history didn’t matter to Saddam.
    “We took our rightful lands back,” he claimed again and again. “It was always ours, and now it is again.”
    I felt about Kuwait the same way I felt when I heard about break-ins or robberies—it wasn’t right.
    I wasn’t surprised when I heard that America’s President Bush was getting together a coalition to free the annexed country. It wasn’t hard to figure out what would happen—Iraq would lose. I remember having many conversations with friends in the army. A surprising number thought that Iraq would defeat the United States and other coalition members because our religion was better and that God would inevitably be on our side.
    “It’s not about religion,” I told them. “It’s about technology. And we have no right to be in that country.”
    Of course, I could only have such conversations with people I truly trusted. Talking about the war—or saying anything that could be interpreted as criticism of Saddam—would have been suicidal. At best I would have ended up in jail.
    I came back from Mosul and rejoined my anti-aircraft unit, waiting for the inevitable. It took several months for the Western nations to organize and group for an attack. The fall passed into winter. The conflict didn’t seem real. There were negotiations, deadlines—nothing that remotely affected me and my tiny anti-aircraft installation deep in northern Iraq.
    Finally, on January 17, 1991, the air war began. The Americans and their allies took out key Iraqi air force installations in the first few hours of the campaign—we weren’t touched, which gives you some idea of how important we were. In fact, the war remained distant until U.S. bombers blew out a bridge in Mosul and I heard about the attack from friends and family. Shortly afterward, I saw a division of Iraqi army soldiers walking up from Baghdad. It was a strange sight, thousands of men walking along the road.
    To this day, I have no idea what they were doing. Retreating from a nonexistent (at that point) enemy? Heading north to reinforce the border with Turkey? Mobilizing to the Kurdish area to prevent a rebellion? Whatever it was, they