In 1991 the ‘first’ Gulf War took place. Or did it? In three separate articles, published in part by Liberation between January and March of 1991, subsequently put together in extended book form collectively as La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu Lieu by Editions Galilée in May 1991, Baudrillard seemingly demolished this proposition. There was a storm of protest at Baudrillard's supposed nihilism, relativism, postmodernism, naivety and amorality which had barely died down by the mid 1990s. For instance, Christopher Norris saw Baudrillard as a postmodernist intellectual whose work, especially on the Gulf War, should be shunned and pilloried as part of a growing body of ‘uncritical theory’. Many others barely gave it the time of day or merely laughed it out of court. Baudrillard, who had a wicked prankster-like sense of humour, always resented the fact that his work was not taken more seriously. In 1995 the English translation of the book was duly published by Power Publications in Sydney, with no let up in the global vitriolic criticism and howls of derision. The translation was by Paul Patton, veteran follower and translator of Foucault and Baudrillard from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, who also supplied a fascinating and rigorous introduction to the English edition, essentially defending Baudrillard and placing the three articles in an overall context. They were published in the book as three separate chapters: ‘The Gulf War Will Not Take Place’, ‘The Gulf War: Is It Really Taking Place?’ and ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’.