They lay as they had fallen, crumpled and now frozen in death, dust-covered mounds in the flat expanse of the gray-brown desert. There were hundreds of them, Iranian infantrymen who had fought and died. A column of Iraqi tanks, their spotlights flickering through billows of thick dust, churned past the bodies toward the east; the roar of their engines blended into a continuous hum. As outgoing rounds of 130-mm artillery shook the windows of his headquarters nearby, Iraqi Major General Sultan Hashem Ahmed told a group of reporters: "There are no Iranian soldiers on Iraqi territory--not even one."
Thus did a...