Been There, Done That

It was
eerily appropriate that the very first question in President Bush’s press
conference the other night was about the Iraq-Vietnam analogy.

Bush stared straight into the camera and declared, of course, that there
was no similarity at all between the desert quagmire of
Iraq and the jungle quagmire of Vietnam a generation ago.

That’s reassuring, as the Dowbrigade has recently been torn by wave
after wave of blood-chilling deja-vu practically every time we watch
the evening
news. The Commander in Chief went on to say that even talking about Iraq
and Vietnam in the same terms was unpatriotic and just short of traitorous,
as it undermines our fighting boys and girls in theater, and sends a
deadly, encouraging message to the enemy. Hearing this, we were hit by
another nauseous wave of traitorous deja-vu.  Meanwhile, the body
count keeps going up and up….

Although President Bush declared major combat over almost
a year ago, last week
was the deadliest yet for Americans in uniform. The Department
of Defense identified 64 service members who died in the week that ended
on Saturday.
Until then, the highest toll had come many months ago, not long
after
the start of the war last March, in a week when 50 Americans died.

The dead came from cities and small towns across the continental
United States, as well as from Puerto Rico and the Mariana Islands.
They came
from all the major service branches – the Air Force, Navy, Army,
Marines, as well as the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve.

They were as young as 18, as old as 45. At least two were women.

from the New
York Times