As the Senate hears Petraus spin the war: Soldiers Killed in Iraq Top First Four Years in Vietnam

[liberal N proud]

I dug this out of my bookmarks while I was cleaning them up
It is an old link by ckramer Mon Oct-24-05 but it still does not get the medias attention.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1874238

Soldiers Lost in Iraq Top Those Lost in First Four Years in Vietnam; Expert on the '60s Reflects on Similarities, Differences

"The nearly 2,000 Americans killed in combat (1,998 on October 24, 2005) in Iraq since 2003 are more than were lost in Vietnam combat in the first four years of U.S. combat (1961-1965, when just over 1800 died). This total is more than were lost in the last two years of combat (1971-1972, when just over 1600 died)," recounts Maurice Isserman, co-author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s."

The link to the original story is still good: http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20051024.120319&time=13

[gratuitous]

1. Every time Petraeus looks at his shiny stars

I hope he sees 1,000 dead men and women for each star. If one of his underlings came to him with the report he's reading to Congress, a report that is contradicted by his own eyes and experience, I'm sure he'd kick that underling's butt from here to St. Swithins' Day and back again for being such a load of nonsense. Yet here he is on Capitol Hill, citing a bunch of fudged numbers and cherry-picked statistics as if they represented reality; as if they confirm the announced mission; as if this is what they were trying for all along these past 10 months.

When the Iraq Study Group report came out, flawed as it was, I figured that this was the chance to provide some political cover to get the hell out of this quagmire. But no, Bush had this brilliant idea for a surge, and I thought the only thing worse than to pull out precipitously would be to dick around for 10 months and then pull out precipitously. And now we're being told that we should go another six to eight months with another 1,000 dead (getting awfully crowded on the general's stars now, maybe he needs another one) before we can conclude that this failure is really a failure.

If it were in my power, Mr. Petraeus, you would walk out of the hearing room without all those snappy ribbons and without any of those shiny stars, and you'd be taken into immediate custody for gross dereliction of duty in betraying the trust of the soldiery and the American people who supplied you with all those willing bodies for a strategy that you knew wouldn't work, couldn't work, but which you cravenly carried out anyway, because you fear the Bush administration more than you fear the people of the country you swore to serve. Shame on you, Mr. Petraeus.