"Ed - we have a lot to lose! Don't inadverdantly turn into McNamara. with his numbers, bat boy."

Yes, you're right Lee. Many people have a lot to lose, but some a lot more than others. 3000 American servicemen and women are dead and tens of thousands wounded, Many with head injuries that will require custodial care for the rest of their lives.

Thousands of others will suffer emotional trauma and many of them will wind up in homeless shelters with drug and alcohol dependencies.

Many, perhaps like your dad, will readjust to civilian life but will forever have their silences and things they won't care to remember or talk about.

There are, according to one recent report, 600,000 Iraqi civilians dead since the US invasion.

I did not mean to imply that there are not losses, and big, lasting ones at that. I meant to suggest that terms like "winning", "losing" , and "victory" are hollow, meaningless concepts stacked next to the hard facts of this war.

As far as numbers go, I meant to challenge Kevin's figure on Vietnam because I do not believe it is at all accurate. I do not doubt that people suffered and died in Vietnam at the hands of the Viet Cong after the war, but I believe that it is generally agreed that the anticipated mass reprisals by Hanoi did not occur as advertised.

I raised the issue about numbers in the interest of historical accuracy. It's really easy to draw the wrong conclusions if your information is faulty.