How powerful was Irag on the eve of the first gulf war? I've

They were like the fourth largest military on earth.

As it turns out, the size of their military forces was mitigated by their blistering incompetence.

This being said, they probably would have won a fight against England + France.

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>>3236564
They had just come out of the Iran-Iraq War, so they had tons of military equipment, but they were also militarily exhausted.

As for conquering Saudi Arabia, it's not a crazy idea. They had just tried to conquer Iran and had successfully conquered Kuwait. Hussein liked to LARP as Nebuchudnezzar (sp?).

..

Arabs kind of suck ass at war. No organization.

>>3238811
How the hell did they win against the crusades then?
Miracle from god?

>>3238826
That was 99% the turks, who are pretty good at war.

>>3238826
He probably means modern Arabs.

>>3238826
>Medieval war
>Organized
There's a reason Arab military success ended with the birth of professional armies.

>>3238826
>when you need to hark back and cherrypick from like hundreds of years

I mean the Arab-Israel stuff. Several large population countries not being able to beat one tiny country.

>>3238826
The same reason they lost to Turks, Perjians, and Colonizers

>>3238826
The military was all turks and kurds basically.

>>3236579
Nope. Population at the time was app. 18,000,000. They could have fielded at most 500,000 1A troops. 250,000 is more plausible.

>>3236564
They needed money, apart from Israel they would have put up a good fight against any Middle Eastern country.

Against a Western military though they would have had no legs to stand on though since most of it's forces were conscripts.

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>>3238826
For the most part those were made up of turks

But i think that anon was talking about modern arabs who suck for the fact
They have no organization
Their information system is trash
They have shit education for their troops and the troops hardly help that fact
They promote based on loyalty not merit
And because they promote based on loyalty and information becomes a source of power to be kept, generals view holding valuable information as something to keep their position secure so they don't bother to tell anyone else about it.

General Saddam Muhammad would use that to justify why he shouldn't be replaced or why he should be promoted something to keep and prove his worth.

Basically they spend more time fighting themselves and looking out for themselves rather then the enemy, typical arab stuff really.

But that's a pretty short summary of it all

source:
http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

Or if you wanna go really in depth read the book length version of this shown to the left

>>3238826
>>3240150
>Basically they spend more time fighting themselves and looking out for themselves rather then the enemy, typical arab stuff really.

I should also add they aren't shit at educating their troops cuz their ill equipped it's because for the reason stated above they don't want to train any troops that can become competent enough to dispose them or outrank them one day again they're just looking out for themselves not the unit or the army or the country.

>Get stalemated by a country whichwas basically sanctioned against the whole world and uses child soldiers against you

>>3236579
>This being said, they probably would have won a fight against England + France.
They couldn't even best Iran.

>>3236579
What in the fuck are you talking about? The UK and France both have good air forces and air superiority is probably the largest factor in why the US and the rest of the coalition completely demolished them.

>>3236586

Tried and miserably failed to defeat Iran, and Kuwait was hardly a victory worth mentioning, fucking Denmark could have taken Kuwait. Iraq was broke and their military was a demoralized shambles whose leadership had been regularly decapitated by Saddaam. They weren't going to be taking on Saudi Arabia.

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>>3238811
This.

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>>3240174
you should fear the Persian warrior

>>3239117
Try ~650,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War

>>3240250
I think their entire army deserting was a solid reason.

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Launching 39 scud missles at Israel during the war and daring the Arab world to make it 40 took balls. I'll give Saddam that.

>>3236564
What the fuck was going through Saddam's head when he decided to invade Kuwait?