Not at all Like Vietnam

Dozens of wounded soldiers are arriving at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany:

A planeload with 53 wounded from Iraq, most of them from Fallujah, arrived Thursday morning and another with 49 more was due in later in the day at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center totaling 102 for the day, spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.

Two more planeloads of wounded were expected Friday.

The military is doing their best to spin the situation as positively as possible:

Lt. Col. Richard Jordan, a physician at the hospital's Deployed Warrior Center which assesses incoming wounded after their six-hour plane trip, said the majority of injuries were "significant, but not major."

"We've had more cases of bullet wounds than usual, though some have also suffered blast wounds from rocket-propelled grenades," he said.

There were several intensive care cases involving brain or spinal injuries or traumatic amputation of limbs, he said. Four such patients were brought in Thursday morning on the first plane and four more are expected from the second plane later Thursday, he said.

The military has reported 13 Americans killed in the Fallujah campaign, which began Monday night with thousands of U.S. Marines and soldiers and Iraqi troops pouring into the city.

Bullet wounds, blast wounds, amputations, brain and spinal injuries are somehow "not major." I guess the thirteen acknowledged deaths don't count either...

And while were slogging through Fallujah, violence escalates elsewhere--a car bomb in Baghdad kills seventeen, while police stations are overrun in Mosul.

The Times also has an article describing the nightmare of urban warfare--snipers picking soldiers off one by one, soldiers on high alert startled by the slightest of noises, and so on.

But it's not at all like Vietnam.

No, I think it might be getting more like Apocalypse Now.

Ian McGibboney links to an article in a British trash tabloid about English troops being entertained by a live sex show, reminiscent of the Playboy bunnies scene in Coppola's movie. The airstrikes in Fallujah are like the napalming of entire swaths of forest for the benefit of Kilgore and his surfing buddies. Fallujah itself is Do Long Bridge.

But, no, it's not at all like Vietnam.

Numerology continues apace. First, it's said we took seventy percent of the city, then fifty percent, it's said we've killed six hundred insurgents, then it will be one thousand, then it will be one hundred--then maybe we'll be saying we've taken "substantial" control of the city--then we'll probably withdraw and take on insurgents elsewhere...

Meanwhile, our puppet Allawi is in no way like the various clowns we propped up in Vietnam. From the looks of it, he's even worse, even as we allow him to rubber-stamp our decision to attack the city itself.

By the way--has anyone besides myself been wondering why we don't see casualty figures for say, Poland? Italy? Or any of the other twenty-five or so countries in the grand coalition pResident Bush managed to cobble together?

No, this isn't like Vietnam at all. It's worse.

Note: this will be a slow post day. I'm heading out to Timshel's part of the state to pay a veteran's day visit to my father, who, in full disclosure, was a career military officer. I will honor his bravery, heroism, and courage--as a Naval aviator, he routinely took off and landed on aircraft carriers. No, he wasn't a fighter jock--the planes I remember him flying were the E-1b Tracer radar plane (the Navy equivalent of an AWACs), and the C-2 Grayhound--but the kind of flying he did took considerable skill.

Here's to all veteran's on this day.