Rolo,You may be right, Col. Hackworth may have changed his mind; I don't know. He has his own website - www.hackworth.com - which I checked this morning but on which I did not see any new essays. You might want to check it out for yourself. (I'm not sure how often he updates the site.)Regarding your point about whether the first Gulf War ever really ended, I've been trying to remember (and I hope someone can help me out here): the original UN resolution(s) before the first Gulf War authorized use of force to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait. But did it also call for the disarmament of Iraq? Did it give the leaders of the first coalition authority to put whatever conditions they wanted on any cease-fire? Supposedly the reason we did not overthrow Saddam in 1991 is that would have exceeded the authority of the UN resolution. I do know that the southern fly zone started out a full degree of latitude south of where it is today, and that when the US and Britain expanded it to the gates of Baghdad in 1995 or '96, France (and I think Russia and China) opposed this. Is it for the US and Britain by themselves to decide when the first war "ends," or is it for the security council, or is for the world/UN as a whole? I honestly don't know.