[Austin Willard Wright]

I keep hearing people make this comparison. I'll bet any of them dollars to donuts that these Wolverine, etc. potshots were on a minor scale compared to the current bloodletting of Americans in Iraq.

I have a very simple question which can prove this case one way or the other: how many American troops were killed by post-war guerrilla action in Germany? As long as that question remains unanswered, this comparison will properly be dismissed as fallacious.

BTW, please do give me the "do you our research" runaround routine. I have. I called the Center for Military History (the chief federal military history agency) in Washington and they think this comparison is bogus.

[Steve_Seattle]

One of the quoted articles claims that the German "Werewolves" " . . . took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers." Unless this claim is false, I don't see why you discount the comparison with Iraq.

[thegreatbeast]

Well, Mr. Wright, if you read the post, you saw this, "...an explosion in the Bremen police headquarters, also in June 1945, killed five Americans and thirty-nine Germans."
That was just one instance. The fact is that the 'wrapping up' is just beginning in Iraq. Why don't we wait awhile before trying to characterize or judge its success?

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

You're a war historian and you think our post-major ops casualties have been high? We have ~ 150,000 troops across Iraq - a nation the size of Germany - w/ ~ 24 million newly Freed Iraqis. During the last two weeks in June, as our troops were completing the third of three major aggressive operations to root out loyalists, the press became increasingly shrill. By the month's end an ignorant media watcher may have believed our troops were helpless, victims of the Big Bad enemy - dupes of the government, instead of the warriors they are. The last two weeks in June we had 13 fatalities - 7 hostile. One porch accident in Chicago the same period claimed more US casualties. Our guys took out - in Operation Scorpion alone - over $9 million bad guy funds, mountain of bad guy weapons and detained over 1000 bad guys - bad guys with intel.

This week has been a high-casualty week. The Hussein boys co-rats. We lost 13 troops in one week..as usual by cowardly means...ieds and RPG hits on convoys, and tossing a grenade at troops guarding a children's hospital. The leftovers started hitting civilian targets with greater frequency in the last few weeks - because they are very familiar with our military. You should check the CENTCOM security logs. Our troops take out far more bad guys - with the help of the Iraqi people - daily.

Some reporters mistakenly claim the war was declared over when the President declared major operations over. They know better. The eight objectives were clearly spelled out at the beginning of the war and the troops have accomplished most of them in just 4 months and 10 days. Awesome.

Of course the two wars were very different. The losers who refuse to denounce their loyalties to the monsters they served - whether Ba'athist Socialist or National Socialists - share the same future - no place in the land they once ruled. They are both isolated and defeated, desperate individuals - stripped of command and control, funds and future. They will fight to the death....'to the death' being the key.

*ONE DAY IN IRAQ

*What Our Troops Did to the Bad Guys