Sunday, September 10, 2006

Shades of yesteryear

Dr. Cole:

The McClatchy News Service has cast doubt on the numbers of killed in Baghdad for August as announced by the US military. The report finds that the "count" of declining "murders" in Baghdad for August had been intended to exclude victims of suicide bombings and mortar attacks!

Some may conclude that since the US miltiary is not making any real progress in stopping the civil war, they have now begun attempting to manipulate the numbers.

...


Yeah, Iraq is going swimmingly and there's no reason to leave. Hell, we lost 58,000 troops in Vietnam, right? We're nowhere near that yet. The U.S. government did the same thing with enemy body counts, except in reverse, 40 years ago and that war dragged on until '75. I was born after Vietnam began (my boss Harry enlisted in the Air Force 3 weeks before I was born) and I was 13 when we finally left Saigon. I do not remember a day in my youth when the nightly news did not have reports from the war zone; U.S casualties for the day and the enemy's dead.

There will be another generation of American children who will have the background of war as a constant in their lives for a long time and many will have an empty seat at the dinner table as a result.

So much for the Good Old Days.

November.

No comments: