Stormin' Norman dead at 78

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Hannibal, Patton, Alexander, Napoleon, Attila The Hun, Robert E Lee, Freddy the Great, Stormin Norman, and not in that order.

He's up there.
 

McBain said:
Hannibal, Patton, Alexander, Napoleon, Attila The Hun, Robert E Lee, Freddy the Great, Stormin Norman, and not in that order.

He's up there.
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I wouldn't place him in that type of company if I'm honest. Still a great leader and I have a lot of respect for him.
 
Dylan said:
Sure, he had options available, but to go into Kuwait, against a million man army and dismantle them with practically no losses is still an amazing feat.
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Not considereing he had totally air supremacy & pounded a poorly equiped & largely dis-inteterested Iraqi army into total oblivion it isn't. His methodology was hardly rocket science. Bring on the B52's & the napalm lads.........pffft.
 
Modern Day Carpet Bomber that unleashed one of the biggest offensives in history against a rag tag rabble of conscripts and as I remember an American in his slip ons crawling out of a hole in a bermuda shirt, he did the job like but he used all his power plays in the first over.

Just goes to show though that there are many differing opinions of folk in different places and at different times, some hold the exact same opinion of Bomber Command from WW2 for the destruction of Dresden* etc.


*we paid for the builders to go in afterwards like but they can't bring back human life.
 

Saddam did make out he had a good hand like when all he was holding was a 5 flush, so it's no surprise that he had a full house lobbed at him to ensure victory when a pair of 3's would've done the job just as well.

It was Some Poker Face that Saddam had.
 
Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian said:
Saddam did make out he had a good hand like when all he was holding was a 5 flush, so it's no surprise that he had a full house lobbed at him to ensure victory when a pair of 3's would've done the job just as well.

It was Some Poker Face that Saddam had.
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Saddam's one and only strategy - and the one he almost succeeded in, was to bring Israel into the war, in response to lobbing scuds at Tel Aviv. For he knew that if Israel joined in, then that would be the end of the coalition, Saudi Arabia would not allow coalition forces to be based in the Kingdom, and he would have his great victory. However he didn't bank on the SAS taking out his scud sites, and cutting his comms links to those scud sites.

For the record Stormin' Norman initially rejected the idea of using special forces - but was convinced by the commander of the UK ground forces General (Sir) Peter De La Billiere. If he had his way Iraq would have out-smarted him.

Footnote - at one particular moment during the conflict an entire Wing (40 F-16's) of the IAF where airborne and headed for Iraq, before frantic diplomacy got them stood-down!

So I wouldn't exactly put Stormin Normin on any pedastal as a great military commander, but then again everyone deserves a bit of luck and he was a very charismatic leader of men

RIP Norm
 

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