The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
Jean Baudrillard
 Baudrillard argued the Gulf War was not really a war, but rather an atrocity which masqueraded as a war. – using overwhelming airpower, the US armed forces for the most part did not directly engage in combat with the Iraqi army, and suffered few casualties. Almost nothing was made known about Iraqi deaths. Thus, the fighting "did not really take place" from the point of view of the West. Moreover, all that spectators got to know about the war was in the form of propaganda imagery. The closely watched media presentations made it impossible to distinguish between the experience of what truly happened in the conflict, and its stylized, selective misrepresentation through "simulacra".