The inclusion of a Mayan Ziggurat in the graphic didn't fool anyone into thinking they were invading New Madrid instead.
Operation Ziggurat was an unsuccessful attempt in early 2243 to relieve the Grand Council Loyalist garrison on the main planet of the Babylon system, which was at the time being invaded by forces of The Resistance.
Word of the operation reached the Resistance leaders while still in the planning stages, and they were able to successfully prepare for the attack and defeat it. Afterwards, Earth Fleet instituted a policy of no longer using press-friendly names for secret operations, instead reverting to using computer-generated random names, such as in Operation Foliage Gear.
Behind the Scenes[]
This entire operation was invented by player Martin Hohner just so he could make a joke in his story about the real-world tendency to give supposedly-secret military operations press-friendly names like Operation Desert Shield and Operation Restore Hope as part of propaganda and spin-doctor efforts.