Watch StreamingCommunity. They came in the dead of night. Iraqi troops and tanks - hundreds of them - pouring over the desert border. Americans awoke to the news on August 2nd, 1990: Iraq had invaded Kuwait. The White House responded quickly. By January 17th, 1991, eight F-15 fighter jets swept through the Baghdad sky, raining missiles upon the city below. Operation Desert Storm had begun. Within three days, the allied coalition controlled the Iraqi sky. Six days after the invasion of Kuwait, President Bush announced the deployment of 100 thousand troops to the Persian Gulf.