Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
short years before, those who thought of toppling Saddam Hussein as merely an exten-
sion of toppling Slobodan Milosevic, had dismissed as easily done. Vast gravel mazes that
smelled of oil and gasoline heralded the first contractor-built truck stop, one of several con-
structed along the way to service the many hundreds of vehicles headed north, and to feed
the thousands of Marines. Engines and generators whined in the dark. It took days of the
most complex logistics—storing and transporting everything from mineral water bottles to
Meals Ready to Eat to tool kits—to cross the hostile desert till we arrived in Fallujah west
of an American military occupation across the whole country. It was surely wrong to sug-
gest that physical terrain no longer mattered.
