Read the following selection, then answer the multiple-choice questions based on the content of the passage. Use the concepts and skills you have learned from your textbook in any way that you feel will aid in your comprehension of the material.

Question

The Persian Gulf War


In August 1990, with Iraqi forces poised near the Saudi Arabian border (please refer to Map 1), the Bush administration dispatched 180,000 troops to protect the Saudi kingdom. The crisis took a dramatic turn in November 1990 when Bush doubled the number of American troops deployed in the Persian Gulf. Iraqi forces in Kuwait had climbed to 430,000 and coalition forces had to increase if Iraq was to be ejected from Kuwait by force. The president went to the United Nations for a resolution permitting the use of force against Iraq if it did not with- draw by January 15, 1991. After a heated debate, Congress also gave the president authority to wage war.
The 545,000-strong Iraqi army, the world’s fourth largest, was equipped with antiship Exocet missiles, top-of-the-line Soviet T-72 tanks, and long-range artillery capable of firing nerve gas. Hussein tried to bring Israel into the war by launching
Scud missiles at Israeli cities, a strategy thwarted when the United States sent Patriot antimissile missiles to Israel. A month of bombing gave the coalition forces air supremacy and destroyed thousands of Iraqi tanks and artillery pieces, supply routes and communications lines, and command-and-control bunkers, and limited Iraq’s ability to produce nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Iraqi troop morale suffered so badly during the bombing that an estimated 30 percent of Baghdad’s forces deserted before the ground campaign even started.
The allied ground campaign relied on deception, mobility, and overwhelming air superiority to defeat a larger Iraqi army. The allied strategy was to mislead the Iraqis into believing that the allied attack would occur along the Kuwaiti coastline and Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf,
U. S. commander of the coalition forces, shifted more than 300,000 U.S., British, and French troops into western Saudi Arabia, allowing them to strike deeply in Iraq and trap Iraqi forces deep in southern Iraq and Kuwait. Only 100 hours after the ground war started, the war ended.

1. During the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. president was
a. Bush.
b. Schwarzkopf.
c. related to the Saudi Arabian king.

2. The term coalition forces, as underlined in the passage, most nearly means
a. American troops.
b. Iraqi troops.
c. a combination of American, Arabian, British, and French troops.
3. The Iraqi force numbered
a. 430,000.
b. 545,000.
c. 300,000.

4. We can infer from the passage that the Iraqis obtained arms from
a. the United States.
b. Kuwait.
c. the Soviet Union.

5. The purpose of the passage is to
a. inform the reader of the developments of the Persian Gulf War.
b. persuade the reader that the allied forces were right to bomb the Iraqi forces.
c. contrast the coalition forces to the Iraqi forces.

Answer 1

1. a.
2. c.
3. b.
4. c.
5. a.