However, the US recently won a major war in Southwest Asia. With some handy but basically political and cosmetic help from its Coalition allies, the US destroyed the fourth-largest land army on the planet in four days at a cost of only 148 American dead. Geopolitically, this war may have been less significant than Vietnam (with almost everybody in the civilized world versus a clear megalomaniac, victory of some sort was probably not much in doubt.) Strategically and tactically however, Desert Storm was one of the most lopsided and significant military victories since Agincourt. And the American military is quite aware of this.
"Southwest Asia" may have vanished into the blipverse of cable television for much of the American populace, but the US military has a very long institutional memory. They will not forget Southwest Asia, and all the tasty things that Southwest Asia implies, for a long time to come.
Col. Thorpe and his colleagues at DARPA, IDA, and the Army Office of Military History have created a special Southwest Asian memento of their very own - with the able help of their standard cyberspace civilian contractors: Bolt Beranek & Newman and Illusion Engineering. The memento is called "The Reconstruction of the Battle of 73 Easting."
This battle took place at a map line called 73 Easting in the desert of southern Iraq. On 26 February 1991, the Eagle, Ghost, and Iron Troops of the US 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment attacked the Tawakalna Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard. These were untested UStank troops, without any previous combat experience, blundering forward in a sandstorm to confront entrenched Soviet-made heavy tanks manned by elite veterans of an eight-year war. Thanks to the