From Alternative History

This looks like it will be very good. Kepp up the good work. I look forward to reading more! Switaj

The secular Turkish republic would never used a name like Fist of Allah.

You don't mention why George H. W. Bush decides to continue and expand the war. This was counter to that administration's thinking at the time.

Can I suggest that an Iraq general, either by accident or on purpose, uses chemical weapons against US troops which results in high US losses. At that point H. W. Bush would not be able to easily stop the war with just the liberation of Kuwait. A chemical attack of that sort might "justify" and expanded Persian Gulf War enough to keep the coalition together in the larger conflict.

Recent history shows that defeating Saddam's forces is not difficult. How to deal with the country after the Saddam regime falls is what is difficult. It may not be as hard in 1991 as it has proven to be in 2006 and H. W. Bush would have four times as many troops available to him than his son has had in OTL, but it would still not be easy.--AirshipArmada 21:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stance of the rest of the Coalition

"The position of the Coalition forces on 28 February has been widely misunderstood. Our United Nations mandate, flowing from Resolution 678, authorised us to use all necessary means to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait. We did not have a mandate to invade Iraq or take the country over, and if we had tried to do that, our Arab allies would certainly not have taken a favourable view. Even our limited incursion into Iraqi territory had made some of them uneasy. The Arabs themselves had no intention of invading another Arab country. The Islamic forces were happy to enter Kuwait for the purpose of restoring the legal government, but that was the limit of their ambition. No Arab troops entered Iraqi territory... In pressing on to the Iraqi capital... we would have split the coalition physically, since the Islamic forces would not have come with us, and risked splitting it morally and psychologically as well, thus undoing all the goodwill which we had taken such trouble to achieve." - General Sir Peter de la Billiere, Storm Command (1992)

If anybody takes this on, they'll have the above factor to consider. Personally, I'd rework it to make it more nuanced than the simple "George Bush ploughs on to Baghdad". Perhaps a ban on the use of armed helicopters is included in the ceasefire, allowing popular demonstrations against the regime to go unchecked- though I'm unsure whether this'd influence Arab leaders to press on, considering the precedent it'd set for regime changes in the region. --Robcraufurd 11:37, 18 May 2008 (UTC)