THE ANALOGY THAT DARES NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

My buddy Kevin writes in Real Art comments in reference to my last post:

Actually, twice as many US soldiers have died in the last year in Iraq than died in the first 2 years that we had "boots on the ground" in Vietnam. The death toll shot up like a rocket right after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution allowed Johnson to send in and retain more soldiers (I guess his generals told him they couldn't do the job without more troops).

Of course the difference now is that in Vietnam the enemy was using sneak-attack-run, guerilla tactics and in Iraq the enemy is using attack-run-sneak, guerrilla tactics so we should be alright once we send in and retain more troops.

Well put. And timely, as this Knight Ridder article from the Salt Lake Tribune courtesy of Eschaton shows:

The first part of April has been the bloodiest period so far for U.S. troops in Iraq. There were 87 deaths by hostile fire in the first 15 days of this month, more than in the opening two weeks of the invasion, when 82 Americans were killed in action.

"This has been some pretty intense fighting," said David Segal, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization. "We're looking at what happened during the major battles of Vietnam."

The last time U.S. troops experienced a two-week loss such as this one in Iraq was October 1971, two years before U.S. ground involvement ended in Vietnam.

Click here for more.

Not only are we breaking casualty records set during the "major combat operations" phase of the Iraq War, but we are also breaking casualty records set during the Vietnam War.

Oh, sorry, Mr. President; I forgot that observing such facts would undermine the war effort. Sorry. My bad. It's so terrible of me to do something that could get our boys killed or wounded. I guess you wouldn't know anything about that.

Would you?

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