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The letter that appeared in the April 25 Rocky Mountain News, “Congress sending us another Vietnam,” contains some characterizations that are accurate and many that are not. Certainly the comparison of Iraq to Vietnam is quite accurate.
The statement that we “never lost a single major battle” is dead wrong. Just ask Lt. Clark Welch or 1st Sgt. Bud Barrow of Delta Company of the 28th Infantry “Black Lions” Division, concerning the battle of October 17-18, 1967. Alpha and Delta companies were massacred. The Army characterized it as a “victory.” Those who were there saw something very different.
The parallel to the spin put on by the Army concerning that battle and the spin put on Pat Tillman’s death or Jessica Lynch’s rescue would indicate we have not learned much in the intervening 40 years.

Richard Chuvarsky, Denver

READER COMMENTS

It's understandable that our military leaders don't like losing. The trouble is that they sometimes say they are not, regardless of the facts on the ground. Of course, that problem is not confined to our military leaders, but I won't mention any names.

From today's New York Times:

"Within three hours of the Haditha attack," a November 2005 U.S. military assault that killed 24 Iraqi civilians, a battalion operations officer reported to Marine officials that "15 civilians had been killed, 'seven of which were women and kids.'" Soon afterwards, Col. R. Gary Sokoloski approved a press release stating "that the civilians had been killed by an insurgent's bomb." Sokoloski says the statement reflected what was known at the time, but military investigators have suggested it was "intentionally inaccurate," perhaps to avoid "a potential public relations problem that could fuel insurgent propaganda against the American military."

I intended to add: The goal of preventing the enemy from using such incidents as a recruiting tool is understandable. But for goodness sakes, does the military think that the Muslims get their news from the military? There are Muslim news sources galore that will spread the Muslim version of what happened, and it may well be more truthful than the military version. They now have two tools: the incident itself and the coverup. In addition, if you pretend it's not happening, then it is likely to happen more and more.

Truth, the conclusion is obvious, their "news" is intended for US consumption only.

As long as the voters are kept comfortable, everything is fine, regardless of what info needs to be massaged a bit to get the "right" message back home.

Any military setbacks we had in Nam were a love-tap compared to the depredations inflicted by LBJ's(and Nixon's!) cowardly mismanagement of the military situation,aggravated by the hippie press,and maybe a little covert assistance from the KGB....We definitely snatched defeat from the jaws of victory there,and we're well on the way in the Mideast too. We're told we're at war,but it seems to be going about as well as the war on drugs,or poverty,or any other evil situation of the moment.I should think if we were really at war now or at any other time in the last sixty years,the landscape would be very different.As it is,we shadowbox with Islamofascism as we did with Uncle Ho(sorry,Don Imus)

If you think the causalities were high in South Vietnam, an invasion of North Vietnam, which would have been requisite to trying to win the war, would have produced millions of more dead, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them American dead.

"We committed 2.6 million troops, dropped several times the tonnage of bombs that were dropped by both sides in World War II and suffered 365,000 dead and wounded. That in addition to the estimated 5 million civilian and military casualties suffered by the Vietnamese, North and South."

And we didn't even get a foothold in North Vietnam.

Richard Chuvarsky: Difference between Nam and Iraq is the first was fear of Communism that changed Motto to: In God We Trust: And America lost the war; Same motto; Different war, Comes Iraq for which the Lord guarantees; America has lost:

When the Syrians came down like a wolf on the fold,
Ahab of Israel sharpened his sword,
And soon the Jordon was running with blood.
Why did they kill? They killed for the Lord.

When Mohammed ran off to Medina, he swore
He would roar back to Mecca, this time with a horde
Of warriors thirsting for infidel gore.
And why would they kill? They'd kill for the Lord.

When the Pope's Inquisition put thousands in chains
Where their bodies were broken and branded and gored,
The innocent perished in horrible pain.
Why did they kill? Why, they killed for the Lord.

When Puritans filled all New England with dread
To persecute women whose thoughts they abhorred,
They strung up the "witches" untill they were dead.
Why did they kill them? They killed for the Lord.

Now our President says that God gives him the word:
Send infidels off to their blazing reward! So now the Euphrates is running with blood,
And our born-again Prez says We kill for the Lord.

And there you have it, Jackie O'Brien
Your "Shrub" from TexasThought he was a lion. Me, RG your friendly deicide

Posted by Richard Grimes(Risen Ape)r22037yahoo (See ffrf.org) on May 10, 2007 11:23 AM

The media should stay out of the battle zone, and be restricted from reporting...like it used to be during WW2 when we actually cared about this country. The term "War is hell" is too true. The American public can't handle what they see these days (as evidenced by half of the posts on Opinion). Soldiers are soldiers for a reason, they can handle the horrors seen each day. Our pansy society they fight for should not have to be subjected to it day in and day out, and if they want to...sign the papers and join! Or you can just keep reading all this crappy journalism...then write your stupid letters to the editor about how we should pull out...yadda. yadda.

"we didn't even get a foothold in North Viet Nam" Of course not.We didn't even try.THAT'S the truth,Truth.

Jimminy is right: ""we didn't even get a foothold in North Viet Nam" Of course not.We didn't even try.THAT'S the truth,Truth."

Why didn't we try? We weren't able to defeat them in South Vietnam, which we would have to do before we could devote resources to North Vietnam. Or I suppose we could have sacrificed another 100,000 or so dead to go along with the 58.000 dead we suffered in South Vietnam, without winning. We didn't invade North Vietnam because we weren't able to, we didn't have the manpower or the resources. In 1968 we had 536,000 troops in Vietnam and that was insufficient to take care of the south. After years of refusing to publish the figures, North Vietnam released them in 1995 stating that 1.1 million combatants were killed and 2 million civilians, a total of 3.1 million. I presume, but do not know, if that includes both North and South Vietnamese, but no one knows for sure about the accuracy of these figures.

Post at 1:05 So the media should stay out of the battle zone. Our pansy society often sees the battle films, but the word f--k is bleeped out. So there are people shooting and belng shot at and saying those bleeping, bleepers are over bleeping there.

Now who decides our pansies can see war, but not hear it?

Journalists are free people, even in WWII they managed to get the truth out to us.

Are you saying that if people see war, they want to end it.? That a blackout on war news is what we need.?

I sure hope you are not one of those people who complain about "nanny state" because you are advocating a perfect example of that.

01:05 said ” Soldiers are soldiers for a reason, they can handle the horrors seen each day.”

Actually not.

They don’t “handle” it, they come back shaken, broken, and sometimes outright demented. They find it difficult to run a “normal” life, they tend to drink, tend to use narcotics, they frequently have marriage problems, they struggle to keep down a job, and lo and behold, a huge number of them wind up on the street or in prison.
Many of them have flashbacks and have permanently damaged brains or other life altering injuries.

Soldiers are soldiers because of many reasons, some to do with tradition, sometimes because they want to do something for their country, and sometimes because that was the best economic and educational option available to them.
Vanishingly few of them are there because they are “natural born killers” who have the kind of sociopathic personalities that would be required to kill without emotional damage to themselves.

The mystique of the tough soldier who endures is just so much tommyrot, and it is usually perpetuated by numbskulls who know nothing about the degradation and dehumanizing effects of war.

So here’s my suggestion to you 01:05, go soak your head, it’s leaking.

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