Death Highway, Revisited

The pictures were among the most stunning to come out of the gulf war: mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description -- tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, even stolen Kuwaiti fire trucks -- littering the highway from Kuwait City to Basra. To some Americans, the pictures were also sickening. Weren't the Iraqis in those vehicles pulling out ^ of Kuwait, exactly as the U.S. wanted them to? Did the American planes that wreaked this carnage really have to keep up the bloody assaults on an already beaten foe?

Absolutely, say American officers. The aim of the U.S.-led...