Today, Tiburon, a dusty outpost about 100 miles southwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince, boasts of six schools, including two high schools and one of the best irrigation systems in Haiti.

He was less fond of the dour Featherstonhaugh, though he was not especially more dour than the few army men who found themselves stuck in dusty outposts in the remote Southwest while the great war raged to the east.

We decided to try a dusty outpost about 35 miles away in Primm, Nev.

United States soldiers are everywhere, according to the small talk among residents in this dusty, chaotic outpost in a remote region where Al Qaeda forces are assumed to be hiding.

"I'm getting a lot done," he told reporters traipsing after him in the dusty little outpost of Crawford, Tex., this month.

At first sight, this dusty outpost near the Greek border seems unremarkable.

And elders in villages like Gorsene, a dusty outpost some 20 miles southwest of Baidoa, usually demand a hefty share of any food or supplies provided to displaced people who come here, relief workers said.

Without the Civil War, all of Grant's famous West Point generation might have lived out their military lives in dusty outposts.

But as the inspector general for the United States' reconstruction effort in Iraq, Mr. Bowen, 48, was trying to extract a few more nuggets of information from this dusty outpost near Nasiriya.

The son of an impoverished family should never give offense if he could help it and he'd done his best to hide how disappointed he'd been to find himself at this dusty little outpost with no chance of fighting or loot.