Naturally we're not going to disabuse each other of our personal opinions, but it's interesting to talk about, and if anyone feels the desert is not well loved by MMP, all I can do is offer my own view why that might be.
Tunisia had a lot of continental type terrain so I don't include it in comments about the desert. Longstop and the Churchills come to mind, this was all to my mind rather conventional stuff and you wouldn't need the desert chapter rules to do it.
I don't doubt the desert is unique, but that's why it's a turn off for me. Heavy rules overhead and probably not going to sell in the US as well as PTO, which despite the rules overhead seems to attract more popularity.
Note that most of the things you mention as appeal aren't really applicable to ASL. Long range tank battles - they were firing 88s out several kilometres, you're not going to see that in an average ASL scenario, and if you could, what fun would it be? POWs - irrelevant. Patton? Irrelevant. ANZACs? Irrelevant (just British counters with a different unit name on the scenario card).
LRDG are represented in the Special Forces module I think - I obtained a copy via Justiciar if I remember correctly. I'll give you that one - but of course, that wasn't MMP.
I enjoyed AN ARMY AT DAWN and found it fascinating to read about the early US Army going against the Germans. All good stuff, but far more interesting to me to read about Lloyd Fredendall and his bunker than any of the stuff that could be replicated in ASL as a scenario - be it Patton's son in law getting his tank unit blown to pieces, or Patton winning El Guettar with massed artillery.