Hello Vietnam!

Follow-up on body counts

Wow, that quote from Bush I posted yesterday seems like it indicates a pretty significant policy shift. Tony Snow today:

And there is quite often the impression — and I’ve talked about it up here — that our people aren’t doing anything; they’re just targets.

And I think there’s a certain amount of unease in the American public because they hear about deaths, but they don’t hear about what’s going on.

I was speaking last night with a service member, just recently back. He was at our party.

And he’s frustrated because a lot of the activities that they do never get reported.

One of the things that never seems to be counterposed to the death counts is what our service men and women are doing. And one of the things they’re doing is they’re fighting the bad guys.

And as General Chiarelli said recently, bad guys haven’t won a single battle.

For obvious reasons, going back to the Vietnam era, people are loathed to do body counts, but it probably is worth at least giving a general impression of the relative battlefield success of what’s going on, which is a great many members of Al Qaida in Anbar, and also, people who are committing acts of violence in Baghdad and elsewhere, are dying or being captured as a result of these military activities.

So, they're ``loathed''. But evidently that is not going to stop them from trying to generate some jingoistic cheering. If the perception is we're out there drawing blood too, the PR will be better, as if it's some kind of game.

Well, I repeat, the blood the Americans are drawing represents a war against the entire Iraqi population. The US forces never could separate the ``bad guys'', so they've always seen fit to attack and round up all the ``MAMs'', or ``military-aged men'', and a lot of others too. It only makes sense if the intent is to dominate Iraq permanently. The ``mission'' never will be completed because the MAMs, and just about everyone else in Iraq, do not wish to be dominated in this manner. Just like the Vietnamese nationalists.