ABSTRACT
Immediately after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces on August 2, 1990, three US Army Reserve Civil Affairs (CA) staff officers in Washington, DC, were concerned that operational plans might ignore key civil-military considerations. A key civil-military issue had been framed by President George H. W. Bush, when he identified one of the four "simple" goals driving US participation as "restoring Kuwait's legitimate government in place of a puppet regime". The puppet regime installed by Saddam Hussein would follow the Iraqi dictator's every wish and could wreak havoc on the society and infrastructure of Kuwait. Trying to sort out, identify, and install a legitimate regime poised to revive a post-Saddam Kuwait seemed a daunting task. While the mission seemed to devolve on the State Department, recent operations in Panama suggested that aid from the State Department would not be available until well after hostilities had ceased.
