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In early August 1990, Iraq attacked Kuwait, its small neighbor to the south, with overwhelming forces. U.S. Army General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief, United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), later recalledhow the sudden Iraqi mobilization during late July had misled some U.S. military leaders. "Iraq had used the desert near Basra for training before," he explained, "and at first we thought this might be merely another exercise.... But by the end of July, the Iraqis were no longer confined to the exercise area; they had fanned out southeast and southwest of Basra and pointed themselves toward the Kuwaiti border." On August 2, heavy units of the Republican Guard Forces Commandplunged across that frontier, leading a brutally swift assault. These elite troops quickly overran Kuwait, seized Kuwait City, and, on the second day of the invasion, moved rapidly toward the Saudi Arabian border. By August 6, elements ofeleven divisions were either in or entering the small kingdom south of Iraq. These powerful forces firmly occupied Kuwait and stood poised to invade Saudi Arabia.