{"id":8,"date":"2004-09-22T21:45:48","date_gmt":"2004-09-23T02:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/?p=8"},"modified":"2004-09-22T21:45:48","modified_gmt":"2004-09-23T02:45:48","slug":"did-someone-say-quagmire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/2004\/09\/22\/did-someone-say-quagmire\/","title":{"rendered":"Did someone say &#8220;quagmire&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;t believe it. Well, I shouldn&#8217;t be surprised, but still&#8230; when NBC&#8217;s <em>Law and Order<\/em> has a character describe the situation in Iraq as a &#8220;quagmire,&#8221; you have to wonder where they&#8217;re getting their information.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThis is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/opinion\/main.jhtml?xml=\/opinion\/2004\/05\/07\/do0702.xml&amp;sSheet=\/opinion\/2004\/05\/07\/ixop.html\">simply ridiculous<\/a>. Yes, it&#8217;s sad &#8211; no, heartbreaking &#8211; that there have been over 1,000 U.S. dead in Iraq. However, this is a far cry from over <a href=\"http:\/\/web1.whs.osd.mil\/mmid\/m01\/SMS223R.HTM\">58,000 dead<\/a> between 1964 and 1973 in Vietnam. Nor is it 15,000-20,000 Russian dead between 1979 and 1986 in Afghanistan (depending on who you believe; you can imagine the exact number is hard to come by).<\/p>\n<p>This is what happens when a prestigious media outlet like the New York Times utters a word that brings to mind the horrific experience of Vietnam. Eventually, the meme is repeated often enough that people start to believe it&#8230; and it ends up in a highly popular television drama without so much as a dissenting opinion.<\/p>\n<p>What a country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;t believe it. Well, I shouldn&#8217;t be surprised, but still&#8230; when NBC&#8217;s Law and Order has a character describe the situation in Iraq as a &#8220;quagmire,&#8221; you have to wonder where they&#8217;re getting their information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-salmagundi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p706FH-8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clank.org\/pundit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}