Iraq or Vietnam

Just in case you were wondering, as best I can figure, the current casualty rate per number of troops deployed in Iraq is getting close to level for Vietnam in 1965. In 1964 there were 206 killed in Vietnam. By 1965 that number was 1863 killed out of some 200,000 deployed.

Bush's team is made up of old cold warriors who have replaced the principle of "containment" and the "Domino theory" with the principle of "preemption" and "Al Queda = Saddam Theory." Compare Bush's convention speech to this statement by McGeorge Bundy, Johnson's advisor: "that in the final analysis, the United States was the locomotive at the head of mankind, and the rest of the world the caboose." He assumed that American-style democracy would always be preferred. It was a justification for the war of the 1960s and it has become the justification-of-the-month for the quagmire in Iraq.

Need another parallel?

Johnson (Bush) made a nationally televised address, deliberately distorting the facts and inflating the case. Congress granted him sweeping military powers under Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (Resolution Authorizing Use U.S. Armed Forces against Iraq). From "The Vietnam War and the Tragedy of Containment" by Michael O'Malley