Back home, flag-waving hysteria followed Operation Desert Storm to its climax, and returning conquerors, including then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, were feted as national heroes.

Minor glitch. A few months later it was revealed that actually 100,000 to 200,000 Iraqis, many of them unarmed civilians, had died during the six-week attack, including tens of thousands mowed down in aerial assaults as they were trying to flee along what became nicknamed "The Highway of Death."

Equating civilians and combatants is integral to "The Powell Doctrine" which recommends using overwhelming force on the enemy, regardless of civilian casualties.

In his autobiography, Colin Powell discusses the Vietnam War and explains the benefits of destroying the food and homes of villagers who might sympathize with the Viet Cong: "We burned the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters ... Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said people were like the sea in which his guerillas swam.

"We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?"

Unmentioned is the moral implication of targeting civilians, or why doing so would make them want to sympathize with the US.

A few years later, Colin Powell was an up-and-coming staff officer, assigned to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai, Vietnam.