Good post, Smooth. I’ve seen an hour documentary on this mission, possibly on the History channel. This piece describes it well, it was one error after another.
The critics of the war in Iraq have no clue about the sacrifices of Americans in previous wars.
ping for reading tomorrow. Not only do they not understand the sacrifices that were made, but the errors that were made as well, and that they in some sense are common to war (or anything for that matter).
I think Medved did something on our various wars (Revolutionary, WW I, and WW II) and how looking back it is easy to think that winning them was “inevitable”. But that is sooooo far from the truth. With the Revolution and WWII the little bit I know of the History is that numerous times key battles hung in the balance and were only won by our brave sacrificing their all.
Some old vet the other night said something about how he’s not a hero - all the hero’s died in battle. God bless our vets.
... and I’ve been known to be smooth at one time or another :)
Well, to give the devil his due, the NYT published a graph a few years ago comparing casualties of WWII and other wars, including Iraq. It was a big full page thing with WWII towering the length of it, and Iraq a little blip along the bottom. I forget the parameters. It may have been time scaled over the length of the war. Anyway, it made the point.