16 million served in WWII.
500,000 killed (just over three percent)

140,000 troops NOW in Iraq. Less than 3,000 killed (just over two percent) using that number for THIS YEAR ONLY.

I can't locate any reliable numbers as to the total amount of troops that have served in Iraq to date, but if you figure 150,000 per year since it started, you get about 550,000 pairs of boots on the ground. This makes our figure more like half of one percent.

Your point was?

Oh, like you didn't know the answer before you asked, Anjin-san.

Now we use precision guided weapons to prevent collateral damage and spend more time fighting public opinion regarding civilian casualties than we do the enemy.

If you want a real comparison between the two conflicts, drop a couple of well placed nukes around Baghdad and see how quickly this all comes to a screeching halt.

So what's the point of this comparison again? The left wants us to start incendiary bombing Iraqi cities?

Can you document all these postwar attacks on occupying US forces in Germany & Japan, or is it just something you heard from Rush?

Um, Cirby & Bithead, the Germans aren’t blowing us up every day.

They certainly were following the war, however, and that's the point. Had we followed your advice in both those cases, Germany and Japan would not be the countries of the world they are today.

Although they were broadly at a far lower level of intensity than Iraq, the Malayan Emergency lasted over a decade and the Hukbalahap rebellion was only a couple of years shorter.

None of that's to say that Iraq is going anything other than very, very badly, mind.

If one go by what was historically typically considered the length of the war then Iraq lasted weeks. The violence now in Iraq would be considered local unrest. Do time change and can war be redefine? Of course, but to considered the to wars equal when they have different definitions is dishonest.

I won’t even get into the debate that if we follow the same rules and threw everything we could into the current conflict like we did in WWII the situation would be different.

And I don't see how you can possibly equate US activities in South Korea with our activities in Iraq. How many times do US troops setup armed checkpoints in Seoul? We are a barely noticed presence there. In Iraq, we are more noticeable than the Iraqi government, we are involved in every aspect of that country's life.

In the case of WWII, we are stopping with V-J Day and not counting the post-war occupation and nation-building activities, which lasted until 1952.

Nor were the Japanese attacking us; I'm finishing Manchester's bio of MacArthur right now, and the Americans were positively spooked at how completely the vanquished accepted the occupation. A few random assassination plots here & there, but nothing remotely comparable to Iraq post-April 2003.