In the winter of 1991 amid the burning oil wells of Kuwait two armies faced each other in the desert at stake were the oil wells of the Middle East and America’s leadership in the world. The war in the Persian Gulf would be the first test after the Cold War of America’s promise of a new world order.

For the American military this would be a war fought on two fronts against an Iraqi army entrenched in the desert and against the entrenched ghosts of an old war.

You seen the Persian Gulf didn’t last for six months, it lasted for twenty years and Vietnam was its poltergeist. The whole thing had a psychological dimension as a consequence of the Vietnam war and this would transcend Saddam Hussein in the invasion of Kuwait in ways that made this war larger than it really was.

This is the story of what happened when America confronted Saddam Hussein and itself in the Arabian Desert.