ten Middle East nations known as the Gulf Area Oil Companies Mutual Aid Organization. This group generally has little difficulty in dealing with average-sized spills in the region. However, it had "nowhere near enough containment booms, skimmers, barges and other cleanup equipment in or near the gulf to contain a gusher like the one Saddam has uncorked" (p. 38). Cleanup operations in the Persian Gulf were also made difficult by the fact that a war was going on at the time. Within a few days, the oil spill created by the Iraqis had spread throughout the gulf. After the conclusion of the war, it was estimated that "the oil has affected approximately 180 kilometers of the Saudi coastline about 60 kilometers severely" (Warner, 1991, p. 26).
In the final days of the Persian Gulf War, Saddam Hussein realized that he was fighting a losing battle. Thus, he ordered his troops to begin retreating from Kuwait back to Iraq. While they were retreati
...