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The war as a whole might be the most one-sided in all history, as indicated by the casualty figures. Latest count for the full 43 days: 149 killed and 513 wounded among the allies, vs. perhaps more than 100,000 deaths and injuries among the Iraqis, though an accurate total may never be known. The conflict challenged a whole series of military shibboleths: generals always refight the last war (Saddam in fact planned a rerun of the 1980-88 war with Iran, but allied strategy and tactics bore no resemblance to Vietnam or Korea); air power alone cannot win a war (maybe not, but it destroyed up to 75% of the fighting capacity of Iraq's front-line troops in Kuwait, making the remainder a pushover); an attacking army needs at least a 3-to-1 superiority in numbers over a defending force, maybe 5-to-1 if the defenders are well dug in (allied forces routed and slaughtered, by a combination of firepower, speed and deception, Iraqi troops that outnumbered them at least 3 to 2 and were extremely well dug in).
Another shibboleth is that no battle ever goes totally according to plan. The final land campaign, however, may become the classic example of a battle in which everything happened exactly as planned, on the allied side -- except faster and better.
Even before the ground campaign began, the war had been won to a greater extent than allied commanders would let themselves hope. It was known that five weeks of bombing had destroyed much of the Iraqis' armor and artillery. But not until coalition soldiers could see the corpses piled in Iraqi trenches and hear surrendering soldiers' tales of starvation and terror did it become obvious how bloodily effective the air campaign had been. One of the key questions about the bombing was how much it had disrupted Iraqi command and communications. The damage turned out to be almost total. Iraqi troops could not communicate even with adjoining companies and battalions; they fought, when they did fight, in isolated actions rather than as part of a coordinated force. One unit of the Republican Guard was caught and devastated on the war's last day while its members were taking a cigarette break; comrades in surrounding units had been unable to warn them that onrushing American forces were almost on top of them.
Bereft of satellites or even aerial reconnaissance, Saddam's commanders could not see what was going on behind allied lines. Thus Schwarzkopf was able to hoodwink Baghdad into concentrating its forces in the wrong places until the very end. Six of Iraq's 42 divisions were massed along the Kuwaiti coast, guarding against a seaborne invasion. U.S. Marines repeatedly practiced amphibious landings, as conspicuously as possible, and as zero hour approached, an armada of 31 ships swung into position to put them ashore near Kuwait City. The battleships Missouri and Wisconsin took turns, an hour at a time, firing their 16-in. guns at Iraqi shore defenses. It was all a feint; * the war ended with 17,000 Marines still aboard their ships.