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I think there are other interpretively possibilities for the Iraq war besides Vietnam. Indeed. In my Post #23 above, I suggested that the Algerian and Rhodesian counterinsurgencies offer interesting comparisons.

Stunning and amazing success or World War II are two rather substantial possibilities that have eluded Mr. Yon.

I don't think the Pacific campaigns offer a lot of similarities other than some dealing with the mindset needed for defeating an enemy willing to accomplish his mission with suicidal tactics; though the Japanese antiguerilla operations in the occupied Phillipines [particularly Luzon] offer some thought. But though neither Anzio, Metz or the Offensive in the Ardennes could be considered particularly successful, there is at least one possible example from the ETO: the July-August 1943 *Operation Husky* invasion, campaign and occupation of Sicily, by the U.S. Seventh Army and 1st Infantry Division under Patton and Sir Bernard Montgomery's British 8th Army. But that campaign concluded reasopnably successfully in just 37 days, and those who view Iraq as a *quagmire* have a point by comparison with the rapid relative success of Operation Husky.

The cost: the US lost 2,237 killed and 6,544 wounded and captured; the British suffered 2,721 dead, and 10,122 wounded and captured; the Canadians suffered 2,310 Casualties including 562 killed in action. But the fall of Palermo resulted in Mussolini's being deposed from power, bled troops from Hitler's planned his offensive near Kursk, and American troops still nervous from the pounding they'd taken in North Africa during the Kasserine Pass now had a campaignm in which they could take legitimate pride.

Unfortunately American soldiers were later found guilty of murdering seventy-three Italian prisoners of war at Biscari airfield, and 318 Americans were casualties of a single friendly fire incident. And the Three German Corps defending the island retreated in good order across the Strait of Messina to fight on in Italy; it was not an unqualified success. And we can wonder what reaction the American public would exhibit if we suffered 2200 dead in Iraq in a single month.

Let's be crystal clear. If it must be Vietnam then let's acknowledge that the fundamental premise of winning for the North Vietnamese was manipulation of America's discursive space to bring about withdrawal and abandonment.

I think this thought has surely occured to all journalists covering Iraq. Sorry, but that's NOT what they're taught in Journalism school, nor the accompanying liberal arts history courses to which they've been subjected.

In the Vietnam war the US, despite its huge wealth and power, was unable to defeat a colonial people. Ever since then the military tops in the US have been anxious to "remove the legacy" of Vietnam and show that the US cannot again be beaten. Although the intervention in the Gulf is primarily to secure imperialism's control over oil supplies, it is also designed to show the world the power of the US.