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Commentary ~ April 9, 2004: President Lyndon B. Johnson
traveled to Baltimore 39 years ago this week to persuade Americans
to support U.S. involvement in Vietnam. At that time, there were
400 Americans solidiers killed in Action. As of this week, CNN reports
that there have been 645 U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war, including
451 in hostile action -- 40 alone killed in the past week.
Johnson's landmark speech, delivered to an audience gathered on
April 7, 1965, in Shriver Hall at the Johns Hopkins University,
was called "Peace Without Conquest."
While there had been 22 deaths in March 1965, another 60 in April
and 88 in May, 235 Americans would die in October and 545 in November.
From 1964 to 1973, 47,355 Americans were killed in action and an
additional 10,796 non-combat deaths were reported in Vietnam. An
estimated 2 million Vietnamese died. The website, www.iraqbodycount.org
has recorded more than 10,000 civilian Iraqi deaths as a result
of the American invasion.
A reporter with the Middle East Online quoted an American Commander
at the ongoing battle in Falluja as saying that fighting is "like
Hue City in Vietnam," referring to the city where, in 1968,
US troops faced the most ferocious street fighting of the communists'
decisive Tet offensive.
A search on news.google.com
for recent articles that mention both “Vietnam” and
“Iraq” came up with 7,210 hits. Each hit represents
a news article from the past 10 days culled from 4,500 newspapers
worldwide. The comparisons are made either by people like John Kerry
saying this is “Bush’s Vietnam” or by people in
the Bush camp saying "I don't see any shadows of Vietnam here
in Iraq" (Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of all forces
in Iraq). However, this latter quote sounds like a kid with his
mouth full of cookies saying “cookies, what cookies?”
Links:
Chronology (from The Guardian Newspaper)
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