Former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett recalling the onset of the Gulf War in 1991:

"The most vivid were the first hours of the air war in which Baghdad was subjected to the most severe bombing in military history. We had a bird's-eye view of the whole event from the ninth floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel in the middle of Baghdad, which was where the media was staying. The bombing began at 2:30 a.m. Baghdad time on an absolute clear starry night. So we could see all the bombs exploding across the city. And it was incredibly dramatic......"

Back then, I was still a research student in the university. I remember following the Gulf War from an old TV set in the lab. Those green images of tracers flying through the Iraqi night sky and British pilots captured by Iraqi soldiers paraded on TV still remain vivid in my mind.

It has been more than a decade ago. I am older and hopefully wiser. Humanity it seems will always be in perpetual state of infancy - each generation repeating the mistakes of the last. We always claim that we learn from history. But the amazing thing is how little we actually do.