Attention all pacifists. Iraq is not Vietnam. Nope, not by a long shot. Let me hit you with some stats. Here’s the reality check for you “too many Americans are dying everyday” types. These are the facts from a reliable source as they stood at the beginning of June.
The Vietnam War lasted 12 years, through three presidencies and cost between 56,000 and 58,000 lives. We’ve just crossed the 3,500 mark after 4 years, 3 months of this war. Keep in mind KIA (Killed In Action) figures include accidents, heart attacks, etc., which is only right, given the stress servicemembers are under; they’re all war related deaths and are treated accordingly. Basic math suggests our current death rate will be 1/5 that of the Vietnam War, although there is no correlating indication that the intelligence level or leadership skills of our elected officials has risen by the same amount.
I especially like the second part of that last sentence (LOL)! So will all of you in the dropping-like-flies crowd please get a grip on reality. O.K., I’m jumping off the soap box and on to sources. Check the link from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count which is tracking all manner of statistics. Like all things mathematical you have to understand the terms you hear and read. So when you see and hear of the more than 25 thousand American casualties that’s wounded personell only. The number of actual American deaths is only just over 3,500 so don’t go around talking in ignorance about how the government is lying about the death rate on the battle field. Understand the terminology and be truthfully informed.
Okay, Marty, I’ve refaved your http://www.martyblogs.com/ site.
And in case you didn’t do it yet, you should be able to go to the site where you bought the domain name and look for “manage domains” or something like that and search for “domain forwarding” and put in the URL of the new site you want it to go to.
Peace and love,
Paula
Marty, I’m pretty sure the comparisons between the Iraq War and Vietnam War are about strategy and other aspects rather than casualty counts. You’re right though.
O.K. Paula. Thanks for the refave and I’ll give the URL redirect a shot. I found the spot on blogger where I could repoint it so hopefully that’s working right.
True Dre there are always strategy comparisons between different conflicts over time, especially the ones where we’ve lost a serious number of personell over time. But body counts are what is shouted about most loudly by critics. And very often it’s most loudly lauded by politicians who pretend to be so naive as to think of war like it’s a gym class instead of killing and dying. I just want people to approach it realistically.
Thanks for coming over to the new sight. Please do a refave when you get a second.