In 1990, U.S. Army Major Martin Stanton was a military advisor stationed in Saudi Arabia. Encouraged by the Army to broaden his cultural horizons, and assured by the U.S. embassy that Kuwait was perfectly safe, Stanton took off for a long weekend there. Roused by gunshots his first night in Kuwait City, Stanton looked out the window and discovered he was in the middle of a full-scale invasion.Iraq’s Gulf War had begun—and in the Kuwait City Sheraton, overlooking the entire western part of town, the United States had inadvertabtly encouraged an Army officer to go "behing enemy lines". As fighting continued and bullets hit the hotel’s facade, Stanton began phoning in intelligence reports to his superiors. He noted the arrival of the first tanks and their strategic deployment—to places with the most shade—as well as the Sheraton’s transition from hotel to Iraqi military headquarters.
