Smasharoo wrote:
What he did was get less US troops killed during his entire term than died in a month in Iraq. Hanging the deaths of 50,000 during the LBJ administration on him is idiotic.
How is comparing the two relevant Smash?
I don't think you can make a comparison between military deaths in a nation that you aren't officially "at war" with, with deaths from al bona-fied military action (with congressional approval and all). They're just completely different animals. Why pick Iraq Smash? I'm sure our casuality rates during WW2 were even higher, right? Get the difference? One is a war. The other is a president chosing to put US soldiers in harms way while pretending that he really isn't.
The biggest complaint about Vietnam wasn't so much the backwards way we got into it, but the fact that it was never officially a war. This, more then anything, made people question the numbers of deaths. And whether you deny it or not, Kennedy very clearly started that process.