“Mugsy’s Rap Sheet”

Last night was another Democratic debate. I will be commenting on the candidates more fully in an “Election Day” report next week, but something else seems more deserving of our attention this Halloween.

Last July, “The New Republic” reprinted an excerpt from the diary of a soldier in Iraq entitled “Shock Troops”. In this particular entry, a young 23 year old soldier documents the way he and his fellow recruits engage in behavior they themselves would of considered abhorrent before their extended tour in Iraq.

Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes read the short article on the air Tuesday to make the point. I clipped that segment from her show because hearing the story read aloud with emotion is far more powerful than simply reading static text on a screen… also, I know how lazy I can get to even read a short article. So for your convenience, you can just sit and listen (WARNING: may be too disturbing for the young’uns, so be cautioned):

All I can help think of while listening to this was, “What happens when these men & women come home?” We’re destroying whatever humanity these people have left by keeping them in an endless war zone. And behaviors many (not all) are engaging in over there may carry over once they finally come home. These individuals are going to require YEARS of psychological counseling after the war to help integrate back into society and the standards of appropriate behavior. Many of them will be raising children that likewise will suffer the effects of their over-extended tours in an endless warzone.

In my later years, I became a fan of old MAS*H reruns. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for the series to finally leave the air, but today, I love every episode. What is most striking about that iconic series is that it lasted 4 times longer than the war itself. The Korean War lasted three years, from June 1950 to July 1953. A common refrain in the series was “homesickness”, how LONG the war was dragging on, “when would it end” and “when can we all go home?”

Now think about the wars in Iraq AND Afghanistan. U.S. troops have been serving in Iraq for over 4-1/2 years now with no end in sight. The “war” in Afghanistan is even more endless, now in its SEVENTH year. And despite BOTH countries having elected functioning governments, U.S. troops remain. Not assisting the respective governments in providing THEIR OWN reconstruction, U.S. troops are playing cop, trying to eliminate violence BROUGHT ABOUT BY THEIR VERY PRESENCE.

So what happens when these troops come home? The thought has often crossed my mind that the Bush Administration has NO INTENTION of ever bringing them home, rendering the problem moot. Either they come home in a box, or they stay as a permanent occupying army in a foreign country, so we won’t ever have to deal with the effects Bush/Cheney’s endless war of greed has had upon them.

(PS: Oil is now pushing $100 a barrel, in part because oil is traded in U.S. dollars, which are becoming increasingly worthless… another casualty of endless war in the Middle East. More on that in a future column.)

President Bush’s approval rating has been in the toilet for more than a year now… down from 51% when he “won” reelection with in 2004.

The most recent Reuters/Zogby poll announced that President Bush’s approval rating is now a dismal 24%. The low 20’s appears to be the absolute floor for Bush loyalists that would have to see him shooting kittens in the face on live TV before they even START to consider not supporting him. Such rabid devotion beyond reason falls solidly in the fanatical.

Air America Radio’s Thom Hartman made a comment in passing Monday morning to illustrate the point of just how low 24% really is. Following up on his theme, I researched a few figures of my own:

80% of Americans believe the government is hiding evidence UFO’s have visited Earth. 60% of Americans can’t name five of the Ten Commandments. 45% of Americans believe the Earth is only 10,000 years old. 44% of Americans with a high school education or less believe that Saddam was involved with 9/11, vs 20% of those who attended college. 39% of Americans believe they are among “the wealthiest 1% of Americans”. 37% of Americans believe in Haunted Houses. 31% of Americans believe in Astrology (horoscopes). 27% in reincarnation. 26.2% of Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. 25% of Americans can’t name more than one of the 1st Amendment freedoms. 22% of Americans say they have actually seen a ghost. 22% of American adults have never used the Internet. 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate. 20% of Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, and not the other way around. 20% of Americans still believe OJ was framed for the 1993 murders of his ex-wife and friend. 15% of Americans believe in Bigfoot. 7% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive. 11% of Americans can’t find America on a map.

People that still have faith in President Bush number roughly the same as the number of people suffering from mental illness. Coincidence?

I happened across this story online while searching for a story on Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls (a factoid I highly question because the support just is not there). The author asks, mystified, “why are so many still clamoring for an Al Gore candidacy?”, he asks. “Even if you don’t like her, there is a long list of capable, highly electable candidates behind her.”

Based upon the author’s lack of familiarity with both candidates, I suspect the author is/was a Republican, who chalked support for Gore up to sour grapes over the 2000 election. So unable was he to think of any other reason beyond the VP’s sudden embarrassment of riches following his Oscar, Emmy and Nobel Peace Prize wins, I decided to set him straight on just why so many of us still dream of a Gore Presidency.

Here is my response to his column:

Hello Mr. Clooney,   After reading your 10/17 story on why support for Al Gore persists despite Hillary’s wide lead, I felt compelled to explain why. Despite what these polls say, Hillary is not as beloved as it seems to suggest. In fact, her lead is a total mystery to me as that none of my fellow Democrats support her. Her support in the online community couldn’t be worse, and she always does poorly in online polls. Her “negatives” are every bit as high as her “positives”, and most Democrats like myself fear no one can mobilize Republican voters like a Hillary candidacy. Hillary has raised a huge sum of campaign cash, but most of that is from corporate donors, not small individual donors like those trailing behind her. And in this country, we have a bad habit of equating “cash” with “broad support”, so the more money you have, the more people think others support you, and they too join in as supporters assuming that they are part of a ground-swell of support… a vicious circle. The support for Al Gore has little, if anything, to do with sour grapes over the 2000 election. While the Clinton Presidency was astoundingly successful, far more credit goes to VP Gore than Hillary, and I think many Americans recognize that fact. Where the Reagan and Bush-I Administrations’ repeatedly rejected opening up the valuable defense asset… a global computer network called ARPAnet… to the general public, VP Gore saw the value in it, pushed for opening it up to the public, and the Internet was born… along with the economic boom that came with it, fueling the fantastic economy of the Clinton Administration. VP Gore held the first hearings on “Global Warming” when most people still lumped it in with “palm reading” and “astrology”. Today, “Global Warming” is mainstream. The fact that it is now a global concern on everyone’s lips is why he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And what is Hillary’s big claim to fame? She was married to Bill Clinton and pushed for a failed national heathcare system that… in its failure, may have delayed our getting national healthcare for more than a decade. Of the Democrats running for President, Hillary is the most hawkish, voting to call part of Iran’s military a “terrorist organization”… the first time any country has so labeled part of another governments military… talks about Iran’s interference in Iraq, has not rejected using force against them expanding this ridiculous war, and has not committed to removing U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of even her second term. Meanwhile, candidates running below her have problems of their own. The top three candidates have a grand total of 12 years political experience between them. And you must look to #4 candidate Bill Richardson before you find one committed to pulling our troops out of Iraq within his first year. To get to a candidate similar in position to Gore, you would need to look to Dennis Kucinich, who has about as much chance of winning as I do. Is the clarion call for a Gore Presidency really that hard to understand?

I suspect you agree, but any additional reasons you can think of would be most appreciated in your Comments.

(Is a vote for Hillary a vote for war with Iran? A little something to consider when pondering support for Hillary:)

Another example of Hillary’s saber-rattling on Iran:

Please excuse the lack of updates in recent days. I am currently distracted by other projects and hope to resume my regular blog updates soon.

Once again, the Bush Administration proves that it can not be trusted to keep highly classified intelligence secure, blowing YEARS of intelligence work and endangering the security of the United States with its ineptitude.

First, it was “Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan“, whom I wrote about last year. Khan was a British MI6 mole inside of al-Qaeda feeding the Brits information. During the 2004 Presidential campaign, the Bush Administration prematurely revealed the existence of Khan in order to score some cheap political points during the campaign. British Intelligence was furious as they were forced to scramble and arrest as many known members of a working investigation before they disappeared into hiding, blowing the case in mid-investigation.

Then it was the leak of Valerie Plame’s covert identity to the press in order to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, when he exposed the fact the Bush Administration knowingly lied about Saddam’s nuclear capability in his infamous “17 words” about Saddam seeking uranium from Niger. Revealing Plame’s identity exposed the company she told everyone she worked for as a CIA front (compounded when reporter Novak explicitly named the company in a second article), destroying an entire intelligence network. YEARS (if not decades) of well honed networks and informants were lost in the blink of an eye… some of who may have lost their lives when her identity was revealed. (I wrote about the events in greater detail when discussing the Libby Verdict some time back).

And now, as former CIA Agent and Weapons Inspector Larry Johnson has pointed out, the Bush Administration has done it AGAIN, this time, with someone inside the Bush Administration revealing the fact they had obtained the latest bin Laden tape before al Qaeda had released it to the public, thus tipping off al Qaeda that they had a mole inside their organization, once again destroying an ENORMOUS intelligence asset, a vital intelligence network, and endangered the lives of agents/informants in the field, crippling our ability to obtain vital intelligence on the plans and activities of al Qaeda.

It is unfathomable that the White House could be so incompetent that it is not only a threat to national security, but whose ineptitude has cost the lives of thousands of Americans, destroyed entire intelligence networks and jeopardized YEARS of intelligence gathering due to ineptitude, incompetence, or even partisan political hackery.

Yet, the Republican Presidential candidates, the media… and by extension, the public perception as a whole, is that “the Republicans are better on defense and national security matters”, while CNN continues even in 2007 to blather on about former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger “stuffing copies of classified documents down his pants”.

It is (long past) time for the Democratic Presidential Candidates to start calling out the Republicans and the Bush White House on its National Security record.

(Keith Olbermann discussed this latest breach on his MSNBC show “Countdown”.)

They’re trying make a case for attacking Iran. And one of the reasons they think they can get away with it is by pushing the meme that “Iraq is nowhere near as bad as Vietnam! In Vietnam, we lost over 58,000 soldiers. In Iraq, we’ve lost less than 3,500! (now up to 3,800.) By diminishing the scale of the Iraq war, expansion into Iran is likewise diminished. In April of 2004, President Bush was asked, “How do you answer the Vietnam comparison?” His response: “I think the analogy is false.” (He did not go on to explain WHY he thought the analogy was false, only that such comparisons demoralize our troops, and then bemoaned how hard his job is.)

ADDEMDUM: Some are pointing out that there were far few troops in-theater in those early years of Vietnam. I would argue that the fact there are as much as TEN TIMES as many troops in Iraq in its first four years further illustrates how dramatically worse Iraq is in what may be its earliest years. If a “President Rudy” should ever see office and the draft reinstated and/or Iran is invaded, the scale of the “War on Terror” could easily dwarf Vietnam.

Now, I know any Vietnam/Iraq comparison is a touchy and deeply personal subject for many, and my intention is not to diminish, dismiss or exacerbate anyone’s pain. But others are doing just that, trying to downplay the casualties in Iraq as compared to the casualties of Vietnam. My intent is only to compare the two conflicts on a level playing field in order to illustrate why their reasoning is not only false, but 180′ from what they are suggesting.

My stock response to those who try and cite the faux statistic of “fewer deaths than Vietnam” has always been: (pardon the gruesome math) “2/3rds of casualties suffered in Iraq today would of been fatal 40 years ago due to lesser medical technology. Adding 2/3rds of the 27,700+ Iraq wounded to the list of fatalities would push the number of U.S. fatalities to date an additional 18,300 deaths.” So, if combat injuries in Iraq today were as lethal as they were in 1965, the number of troops KIA (”killed in action”) to date in Iraq would surpass 22,000!

This compelled me to look at the actual statistics for Vietnam as a basis for comparison and what I found was stunning:

During the first four years of the conflict with Vietnam (1961 to 1965), the number of US troops KIA was UNDER 1,900 (1,864 to be exact)… and that is with 1960’s medical technology. Had they of had access to present-day medicine, the total number of fatalities during the first FOUR YEARS of the Vietnam war might have been closer to just 620 fatalities! Compare that to the 3,800 fatalities we’ve incurred so far in Iraq.

Crunching the Numbers

The key liability of my thesis seems to lie in that “2/3rds” figure I use above. Where does it come from? Is it accurate? According to at least one source (sources for such an obscure figure are few & far between):

The rate of injured limbs requiring amputation was 76 percent in the Vietnam War but has fallen to about 20 percent for soldiers injured in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to U.S. Navy Capt. Amy Wandel, who recently retired as a plastic surgeon at the Naval Medical Center, San Diego.

A decrease of approximately 74% (100% - 20%/76%), close to 3/4ths. The less mathematical interpretation would be a 56% decrease (76% - 20%), or just over 1/2. Splitting the difference, we arrive at 65%, approximately 2/3rds.

According to Army Public Affairs, the fatality vs wounded rate during Vietnam was 3.68% (deaths per 100 wounded - don’t ask me where they get that number from). Their calculation in October of 2003 put the Iraq conflict at 1.6%. They also claim in that October of 2003 report that only “18 soldiers had died from their wounds” during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now, I might have believed that number if we were talking about a single month in Afghanistan, but by that point in Iraq, the number of OIF fatalities was actually 364, so where the heck they are getting “18″ from is beyond me. But, assuming they used the same metric for both OIF and Vietnam, their own numbers produce the same percentages I stated above.

Going by the hard numbers, 58,202 killed in Vietnam vs 304,704 wounded translates to a 16% fatality rate (58,202 / 362,906). Presently, the OIF fatality rate is just over 12% (3800 / 31550), exactly 3/4 of the Vietnam rate. If we take just the first four years of Vietnam, 9,201 casualties of which 1,864 died of their injuries gives us a 20% fatality rate. Using that metric, the 12% fatality rate of Iraq vs the 20% rate of early Nam comes to 60%… just under 2/3rds.

So I think we’ve established that the 2/3rds figure is sound when comparing the increase in survivability since Vietnam, both mathematically and supported by the evidence.

If these figures are correct… and they are… Iraq is DEMONSTRABLY worse than Vietnam was at this point, and on course to become FAR worse.

So in summary, if Iraq were being fought with 1965 medical technology, the number of fatalities over these first four years might be as high as 22,000 (vs 1,900 in Vietnam), but even if you distrust the “2/3rds increase in survivability” figure, a more direct 1:1 comparison can be made between the “9,201 casualties in the first four years of Nam” vs the “31,550 casualties suffered in the first four years of Bush’s ‘War on Terror’.”

The next time some Right-wing wingnut tries to dismiss the severity of the Iraq war by comparing the number of deaths today to number of deaths in Vietnam 40 years ago, tell them… well, I’ll leave that up to you.