BBC - Iraq violence 'linked to US vote'
news.bbc.co.uk
Why such high troop losses in October?
The White House, as well as some experts outside the government, say Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups deliberately are trying to inflict more casualties to influence next week's midterm elections and break American will.
"They think we don't have the stomach for the fight," Vice President Dick Cheney said in a broadcast interview Monday.
In recent weeks President Bush has been among US officials to compare the situation in Iraq with the communist offensive in Vietnam that began in late January 1968 during the Tet, or lunar new year, holiday.
The Tet offensive was a military defeat for the communists in that they did not achieve any of their tactical goals. But by inflicting US and South Vietnamese casualties and carrying out operations throughout South Vietnam, the offensive shocked the US public. Support for President Johnson fell sharply after it began.
Discussing a column by The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, which itself made the Tet analogy, Mr. Bush told a broadcast interviewer this month the comparison might be apt.
"There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election," he said.
American will breaking?
Pham Van Dong, North Vietnam's premier, once said of the Vietnam conflict, "Americans do not like long inconclusive wars, and this is going to be a long inconclusive war, and therefore we will win in the end."
This comment might be apropos today, said Oberdorfer.
"The American people got tired of [Vietnam], got fed up with it, and I can see some of the same tendencies in today's situation," said Oberdorfer.
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