....A hundred thousand tons of explosive power had been dropped on a nation one-third smaller than the state of Texas, from which Bush hailed. The official line was only good news. America's new wonder weapons--depleted-uranium-tipped munitions and precision-guided missiles--had destroyed the Iraqi army but spared Iraqi civilians. The media in their enthusiasm had labeled Desert Storm a "clean war."

The years I've spent as a weapons system analyst told me otherwise, as did Desert Storm veterans I'd interviewed, who spoke of civilian slaughter and brought home photographs of blackened corpses melted by depleted uranium--bodies nicknamed "crispy critters" by soldiers. And so I set out to uncover the dirty lie.

"Do you think we are the Roadrunner cartoon--you bomb us and we don't die?"

"There is no house safe from the bombs."

"Every night and day, the planes brought death."

"Even in a picture, the children scream when they see an airplane."

"Every person lost at least one from their family."

"More houses than I can count exploded."

Word spread that an American researcher was investigating the death toll of Desert Storm, and a self-described "friend of the truth" contacted me. Eluding Walid for a secret meeting, I was surprised to find myself talking with a well-placed Hussein family member. In a meeting so brief as to appear accidental, he told me, lips barely moving, of a civilian casualty cover-up. He hypothesized that as many as 300,000 civilians died in the conflict.

By way of example, he pointed to the many Iraqi civilians who died at war's end, fleeing Kuwait along what the Western press called "the highway of death."

High civilian casualties became politically untenable for my friend's illustrious relative. Fearing overthrow, with the Allied army approaching Baghdad and battling a coup assisted by the dual-faced Iran, the beleaguered Hussein plotted to save face and make the dead disappear.

Powell, who directed Desert Storm as the head of America's armed forces, finds the whole matter of civilian casualties simply inconvenient. "That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in," he said.

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