Thursday, June 16, 2016

Comparing Iraq And Afghanistan To The Vietnam War

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Jacob L. Shapiro, Geopolitical Futures: The Trouble with Ending Wars

Today’s U.S. deployments in the Middle East look similar to those in 1972 Vietnam.

Officially, the United States has 14,187 troops deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – 9,800 in Afghanistan, 4,087 in Iraq and roughly 300 in Syria. If you include Pentagon statistics on various support staff and specialized forces, the number is around 17,050. And if you take into account U.S. Defense Department data on military contractors, the total number swells to 34,397.

So unofficially, the U.S. has a much larger force on the ground in these countries than it wants to admit. The reason the U.S. is obscuring this is because it wants to shape public perception about its successes – and failures – in its post-9/11 wars.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: There are many differences between today's wars and Vietnam .... but there are also some disturbing similarities.

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