[xoxoxoBruce]

An interesting observation from Ernie at EHOWA.com.

But one can not easily compare a war that began in 1941 with one that began in 2003. Because in 2003, we watched the start of the war live on our televisions. We didn't have to wait five days to see photos of the the USS Arizona burn, like those Americans after Pearl Harbor. In 1944 we sent 1,000 B-17 bombers to do the same job a single B-2 can do today. And yet World War II saw us fight a global campaign, against two whole nations, on battlefields that crossed six continents, and still manage to have our guys back home in under four years -- all without CNN or laser guided bombs. In Iraq, we see the best trained soldiers, using the most advanced war fighting equipment known to man, completely immersed in instant global communication, and in the same amount of time it took our forefathers to march from end of the globe to another, we're stuck fighting the same battles on the same streets against the same enemies.

And this disproportionate timeline is certainly not to be attributed to any deficiency on the part of the American soldier; our guys didn't fight any harder in the Ardennes forest in 1944 than they are in Samarra now. I think the shortcoming is how the war was/is managed. I think our technological advantages have bought us casualty numbers that are so disproportionately low when compared to prior conflicts, that one can't help but ask, "What's the hold up?" when the timeline doesn't shrink as well. And it's a valid question.