The impossibility of victory.

"From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country -- and failed. When the United States fought Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won."

--- from Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States - 1492 to Present."

====================================

1964 to 1972. Eight years of war and death. (Saigon fell in '75)

2003 to present. Nearing four years of the same.

====================================

Newsweek ran a story this week on the death of 12 members of the US military on 1/20/07 in a helicopter crash in Diyala province, likely caused by a hand held missile launched by an insurgent.

On that same day, 13 other US military died. Not as high ranking, but still US soldiers, and just as valuable to their buddies and families.

-------------------------------------------------

Would the media in this country try to have us believe that Colonels and Majors and ex-football players deserve cover stories when they die in war, but that the everyday grunts who do the bulk of the fighting, killing, and dying are relegated to local papers?

Headlines and cover stories in widely read newspapers and newsmagazines influence public opinion. And for the media to discover the Iraq War's impossibility of victory four years in is wrong and unconscionable.

Three thousand dead. More will die tomorrrow. And the day after.