Bodies? What Bodies?

War correspondent Leon Daniel was puzzled by the lack of corpses at the tip of the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Iraq on Feb. 25, 1991. Clearly there had been plenty of killing on the previous day, which marked the beginning of the ground war in Operation Desert Storm. But there were no visible signs of carnage because the army had already plowed dirt over all of the bodies. "What happened at the Neutral Zone that day has become a metaphor for the conduct of modern warfare," writes Patrick Sloyan. "While political leaders bask in voter approval for destroying designated enemies, they are increasingly determined to mask the reality of warfare that causes voters to recoil. ... In manipulating the first and often most lasting perception of Desert Storm, the Bush administration produced not a single picture or video of anyone being killed. This sanitized, bloodless presentation by military briefers left the world presuming Desert Storm was a war without death."