On a per capita basis our youngsters are being killed at more or less the same rate as in Nam.

[Flabbergasted]

Ok this is a horrible statement....but it certainly put things in perspective.

This comes from a comment from a Juan Cole article about "the soldiers of Heaven..." and discrepancy in media reports (below along with the comment...)

http://www.juancole.com/2007/01/fighters-for-shiite-messiah-clash-with.html

Fighters for Shiite Messiah Clash with Najaf Security, 250 Dead
Over 60 Dead in Baghdad, Kirkuk Violence

Well, a big battle took place at the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday night into Sunday, but there are several contradictory narratives about its significance. Iraqi authorities, claimed that the Iraqi army killed a lot of the militants (250) but only took 25 casualties itself. The Shiite governor of Najaf implied that the guerrillas were Sunni Arabs and had several foreign Sunni fundamentalist fighters ("Afghans") among them. He said that they based themselves in an orchard recently purchased by Baathists. Other sources said that the militants were Shiites. I'd take the claim of numbers killed with a large grain of salt, though the Iraqi forces did have US close air support. I infer that the guerrillas shot down one US helicopter.

That's one narrative. Here is another. The pan-Arab London daily al-Hayat reported that the militiamen were followers of Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. It says one of his followers asserted that the fighting erupted when American and Iraqi troops attempted to arrest al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. The latter tried last summer to take over the shrine of al-Husayn in Karbala. It may have been feared that he would take advantage of the chaos of the Muharram pilgrimage season to make a play for power in Najaf. Al-Hayat says that although As'ad Abu Kalil, governor of Najaf, said the attackers were Sunnis, the director of the information center in Najaf, Ahmad Abdul Husayn Du'aybil, contradicted him. The latter said, "At dawn, today , violent clashes took place between security forces and an armed militia calling itself "the Army of Heaven," which claims that the Imam Mahdi will appear." He added, "The goal of this militia is the killing of clergymen and the grand ayatollahs." The group follows Ayatollah Ahmad al-Hasani al-Sarkhi, called al-Yamani, who is said by his followers to be in direct touch with the Hidden Imam or promised one. In the fighting 10 Iraqi security police were killed and 17 wounded. One official said that the death toll among the militants was not known.

Al-Hayat, however, quotes a member of the group, Abu al-Hasan, who is said to be close to al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. He said that the rumors that the group intended to conduct a campaign of assassinations inside Najaf was "devoid of truth." It says that an attempt had been made to arrest al-Hasani al-Sarkhi, who was present in the al-Zarkah, an agricultural area east of Najaf, which caused his followers to revolt.

Al-Hasani al-Sarkhi's followers had earlier burned down the Iranian consulates at Basra and Karbala, and demonstrated in Hilla and elsewhere.

Sawt al-Iraq in Arabic says that a number of al-Hasani al-Sarkhi's aides were arrested early last week as part of the current crackdown in preparation for the American surge.

Then there is yet a third narrative. Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that on Saturday night into Sunday morning, a Shiite millenarian militia calling itself "The Army of Heaven" (Jund al-Sama') attempted to move south from the Zarqa orchards just north of Najaf to assassinate the four grand ayatollahs of Najaf-- Ali Sistani, Bashir Najafi, Muhammad Ishaq Fayyad and Muhammad Said al-Hakim. The holy city of Najaf, where Ali is buried, is the seat of Shiite religious authority in Iraq. The militiamen, devotees of an obscure religious leader named Ahmad Hassaani, are said to have infiltrated the area from Hillah, Kut and Amara. The well-armed, black-clad militiamen were heard to call upon the Mahdi, the awaited Promised One of the Muslims, to return on that night.

Here is the comment:

At 10:01 AM, Tupharsin said...
Professor Cole,

I keep coming back to "the numbers".

The numbers of American dead for starters. On the 20th of January there were 12. A couple of days ago it was seven. There are lots of threes. Etc. A website called the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count says the average for this month is nearly three per day. For last month it was nearly four per day. And so on.

Now if you're of a certain age - and I am - Vietnam is the yardstick for this sort of thing. For a long time there were half a million American soldiers there and approximately a hundred of them being "wasted" every week was par for the course.

Now fit the numbers together. There's what, approximately 140k American soldiers in Iraq today. You have to multiply that figure by three and a half to get the half million soldiers in the Nam. The which means that to get a fair comparison you need to multiply the number of American KIA in Iraq by three and a half.

Do that and you make a chlling discovery. Namely that on a per capita basis our youngsters are being killed at more or less the same rate that American kids were dying in the Nam.

And when you bear in mind that many more of them are "surviving" injuries that would have been fatal in the Nam - surviving because of improved battlefield medical treatment - well, there's no question that this thing is as filthy as Vietnam was at its worst.

[MadMaddie]

1. Some if not most of us are not surprised by this..

Due to the negligence of this administration our soldiars death rates will increase with no end in site unless the * cabal is removed.

Nancy Pelosi went to Iraq and is even more determined to get our troops out. I have to have faith that she can take the lead and make it happen.

[Flabbergasted]

2. I think Pelosi will do whatever AIPAC wants in the end...