Battleland

Body Count 2.0

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A segment from an al Qaeda propaganda tape lauding its martyrs

One of the most depressing things about the Vietnam conflict was the steady stream of announcements that so many more Viet Cong and North Vietnamese had died during the prior week than U.S. troops. We felt good about that until some 58,000 Americans had been killed.

By then, we were beginning to suspect that someone on the U.S. staff in Saigon was using new math. No matter how many enemy we killed, we just seemed to be sinking deeper into the Big Muddy. Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal has started asking questions about body counts in Afghanistan that echo those from Vietnam.