I read something very disturbing today

[ALago1]

I was skimming through a book on the 1960's that my girlfriend is reading for a class she is taking today. I stumbled across an alarming statistic: It took approximately two years from the signing of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution for 1000 U.S. soldiers to die in Vietnam. This completely altered my perception of the war in Iraq.

Although I've always thought of the current war as unjust and unnecesarry, I thought it would turn out to be little more than a mini-Vietnam. In other words, a small scale quagmire. I did not think we'd get to the point of having hundreds of GIs per week come home in bodybags. But, because I did not have my history down cold, I forgot to take into account the fact that Vietnam went south quickly and the possibility of that happening in Iraq is ever-present. In fact, one may argue that it has already begun and is inevitable.

Anyway, just thought I'd share this frightfully awakening experience with everyone. Any comments?

[proud patriot]

1. it is quite disturbing isn't it ?

:cry:

[Massacure]

2. Vietnam was armed by the the Chinese, (or was it the soviets), anways

The Iraqi's aren't getting armed by anyone. I don't think Iran has been doing much to stir things up, at least not so far. Even if they start, they cannot produce weapons on the scale that the old communist countries could.

[knitter4democracy]

3. They're armed, though

We never secured the many arms depots and weapons caches from Saddam's regime, but they're gone now. They're armed and dangerous already, and if they really are getting help from the outside, as is claimed, we're really screwed.

I had also forgotten Vietnam took awhile to really become a quagmire. It is odd, too, how much the administration is starting to sound just like it's the Sixties all over again. "Stay the course" Stuff like that.

[Pax Argent]

5. I wouldn't be the ranch on that.

Now that the Bush Regime is beating the war drum again regarding Iran, Iran has every reason to want to pin America down in Iraq.

Someone else in another thread pointed out that Iraq might devolve into another proxy war like....Vietnam. I think the more likely result would be long, hard to maintain supply lines through Iraqnam in our upcoming glorius conquest of Iran.

This is going to redefine <SUCKS>!

[K-W]

9. Thats not what I take from this.

At one point vietnam was a similar situation to now. Then things escalated on both sides.

We went in without any vision of how we were going to get out and we got trapped in while the entire nature of the conflict changed. While it was never right, it was based on something and by the end they were fighting not to get something as much as to avoid losing.

So the question is, with our current situation where we are indeffinately involved in Iraq, what happens if things do change. What happens if Iran does escalate things. What happens if the resistance grows with support from the region. Are we going to pull out, or get deeper in?

And as far as arming is concerened, dont worry, they have plenty of weapons. What do you think fuels the US economy and used to fuel the soviet economy, arms sales. We have been arming the beejesus out of the middle east. It was meant that they would use it on each other, not on us. And there is an huge blackmarket on weapons in that region as well. Where do you think warlords get thier arms, where do you think resistance groups get thier arms. This isnt Vietnam. This isnt an agrarian society where military equipment doesnt exist. This is a region full of weapons and full of people who know how to use weapons.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

12. Prior to the recent conflict, the old Soviet Union and now Russia....

...armed Iraq. The fact that we've lost a few Abrams M1A1 main battle tanks to rocket hits tells me that Iraq is pretty well-supplied.

Additionally, the Iraqis don't seem to be running out of shoulder-launched anti-personnel weapons or small portable mortars.

As to your contention that "the Iraqis aren't being armed by anyone", I would argue that just because you don't know about it doesn't mean that it's not happening. During the Soviet-Afghan War, the CIA was secretly shipping the Afghan resistance anything that wasn't nailed down through third parties...and very few outsiders knew it was happening until the latter stages of the war.

Oh, by the way, the Soviets supplied North Vietnam with their weaponry. particularly SAMs, and sent advisors. The Chinese and Vietnamese historically don't get along very well.

[Nordic]

4. we've lost almost 60 soldiers so far in September

seems like an acceleration to me.

Iraq is just like Vietnam in that nobody wants to get out of it. We have to "win". There's no winning, there's only cutting the losses and doing what we're going to do inevitably anyway.

We need to pack up and go home and hope nobody else dies.

[Eloriel]

7. Right. The numbers game is mostly irrelevent at this point

We have different weapons, so many of the "details" are just different than they were in Vietnam, even the topography. The one outstanding similarity is that this is a guerilla war, just like Vietnam was, and there's no winning a guerilla war unless you basically eradicate the occupied people.

[grace0418]

6. It's sickening

Everything I read makes me more incredulous that Bush-supporters can be so stupid.

[Chomskyite]

8. Reminds me of Zell's speech at the 92 convention

"Let’s face facts: George Bush just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t see it; he doesn’t feel it, and he’s done nothing about it.

That’s why we cannot afford four more years."

http://www.command-post.org/2004/2_archives/015023.html

[Eloriel]

10. For the morning crew

:kick:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

11. Deaths in Vietnam by year and declaration of deaths...

CACCF Record Counts by Year of Death or Declaration of Death (as of 12/98)
<http://www.archives.gov/research_room/research_topics/vietnam_war_casualty_lists/statistics.html#year>

1956-1960: 9
1961: 16
1962: 52
1963: 118
1964: 206

First eight years = 401 total deaths

1965: 1,863

First nine years = 2,264 total deaths

============================================

First 18 months in Iraq = 1,032 deaths