1st Gulf War.....with WMD

Delta Force

Banned
The USAF and USN generally go for the radar and air defense sites in the opening wave of a military attack, and they do so with cruise missiles and anti-radiation missiles. You do not need to use an EMP (nuclear or a conventional EMP, which can be done with special bombs) in a limited war, especially because the Coalition had much more advanced equipment than Iraq. The Iraqis would not have been bothered too much by losing high tech systems because they were mostly an army centric power with centralized command and control anyways and older Soviet equipment that probably still used vacuum tubes (highly resistant to EMP compared to transistors). The US did however do limited EMP like attacks on the Iraqi power grid. Along with attacking energy infrastructure directly, the USAF also dropped bombs that used a modified form of chaff to cause short circuits on Iraqi power lines and make power transmission along the lines impossible until the strips were cleared.

If you tried to EMP Iraq you would end up destroying the power grid of a large amount of the Middle East and probably end up causing severe disruption to the grid in the southern USSR, India, and perhaps portions of Europe. A high altitude EMP by a few missiles can also be considered to be a precursor to a nuclear war (nuclear war was almost caused in 1995 when the Russians interpreted a NASA probe launch and stage separation as four missiles coming in to do a high altitude EMP attack). The EMP attack does not do too much to hardened military systems, but it can ionize the air enough to make radars much less effective, thus blinding radars from detecting further incoming missiles. The USSR would probably interpret such a nuclear launch as an attack by the US upon the USSR and end up causing nuclear war by accident, especially once a nuclear bomb actually exploded.
 

Cook

Banned
In a total war that'd be useful, but in a short UN sponsered intervention it's not acceptable.
Roach and Delta are entirely correct, using nuclear weapons in this situation wouldn't be using the proverbial hammer to smash an egg, it’d be more like blowing up a house to get rid of the mice.
 
Honestly, it probably depends on both the actual casualties, target, and perhaps the actual layout of the battlefield per se. There's would be a world of difference between Saddam launching chemical/biological at Coalition troops, versus firing biologicals at Tel Aviv or unleashing something in Kuwait. So, first one. If Saddam were to get "lucky" enough to causes thousands or more casualties among the Coalition forces, if they didn't respond with a nuke, they'd certainly have a good deal of liberty to drop a lot of the discretion. On the other hand, hitting Tel Aviv, Kuwait, or any civilian target will probably trigger nuclear retaliation.

Actually, either way, the coalition might be forced to respond. Say they don't respond and Saddam makes their bluff public, then the Coalition might be forced to say that they were looking for a suitable military target to hit back. Regardless of the actual target, I don't think the coalition would get enough goodwill and sympathy to hit an actual city with a nuke unless Saddam caused a high 5 or 6 digit death toll with his WMDs.

In any event, that will definitely seal Saddam's fate. No nation can get away with harboring him as a fugitive after that, and he'll be lucky if he gets caught alive, instead of "accidentally" shot or something by troops.
 
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