Word: sand
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...most stunning, overwhelming victory in war is a beginning as well as an end. Diplomatic problems will persist long after the burned-out hulks of Iraqi tanks and the bodies strewn across the cratered battlefield are buried by sand. Political dangers will explode after the last of thousands of mines are dug up. Psychological reverberations will be felt when the final echoes of cheers for the victors have died away...
...more days to get ready. So he and George Bush fixed 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 23 -- noon in Washington -- as zero hour, and Bush made that the expiration time of a final ultimatum to Saddam. As the deadline approached, tanks equipped with bulldozer blades cut wide openings through the sand berms Saddam's soldiers had erected as a defensive wall along the border, and tanks and troops began pushing through on probing attacks; some were across hours before the deadline...
Between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., allied forces jumped off at selected points all along the 300-mile line. Though Hollywood has long pictured the desert as a place of eternal burning sunshine and total aridity, the attack began in a lashing rain that turned the sand into muddy goo. The first troops through were wearing bulky chemical-protective garb, in keeping with the allied conviction that Saddam would use poison gas right from the beginning. In fact, the Iraqis never fired their chemical weapons...
...allied troops had built in Saudi Arabia sand berms and replicas of the other Iraqi entrenchments and practiced breaching them until they could virtually do it blindfolded. Among the tactics: Remotely piloted vehicles, or pilotless drone planes, guided soldiers to the most thinly held spots in the Iraqi lines. Line charges, or 100-yd.-long strings of tubing laced with explosives, blasted paths through minefields. Tanks and armored personnel carriers drove through those paths in long, narrow files, observing strict radio silence. Their drivers communicated by hand signals -- even in the dark, when night-vision devices worked perfectly...
...right of the French, the U.S. 101st Airborne Division mounted a deep- penetration helicopter assault into southeastern Iraq. Chinook helicopters, some skimming only 50 feet above the sand, others slinging Humvees, modern versions of the old jeeps, below their fuselages, ferried 4,000 men with their vehicles and equipment into the desert. The force established a huge refueling and resupply base, then jumped off again from there deeper into Iraq and struck out for the Euphrates River. Other units -- the British 1st Armored Division, seven U.S. Army divisions, and Egyptian, Saudi and Syrian units -- attacked at various times throughout...