October 27, 2003 - On Sunday night an improvised rocket launcher spewed air to ground missiles at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad disturbing Asst. Defense Secretary Wolfowitz' sleep. Rousted from his rest Wolfowitz held an improvised press conference to proclaim that America would not be deterred from completing the mission that the President had declared had been accomplished on May 1 st . Press accounts claimed that 15 had been wounded in the attack. One as yet unnamed American Colonel was killed. During the succeeding 24 hours three more American soldiers were killed by explosions, one at the headquarters of the International Red Cross. The 4 deaths together with the death of a Spanish soldier on Saturday pushed the count of coalition dead in Iraq past 400 on the eve of the holiest of Moslem religious observances, the Holy Month of Ramadan.

For those of us old enough to remember it has been an eerie echo of the Tet Offensive when an American general declared that we had to destroy Hue in order to save it. By all conventional measures the Tet offensive was an overwhelming American victory yet it marked the beginning of the end of America 's Vietnamese war. In the 35 years since the Buddhist religious festival was celebrated by General Giap the way America fights its wars has changed. Iraq is not yet an engagement on the order of the decade long Vietnamese War but it can be described as a "low intensity" Vietnam in which the events of the past 24 hours represent a "low intensity" Ramadan Offensive. The swamp may be shallower than Lyndon Johnson's Big Muddy but the mire still pulls hard at the boots of the troops sent to slog through it.

Giap's offensive had its effect not on the battlefield in Vietnam but rather in the living rooms of Middle America as we watched it unfold on the Evening News. In the short term it brought down a President. Not two months passed before Lyndon Johnson would declare that he would not stand for re-election. What brought that President down was not so much General Giap's offensive but his own narrowness of vision - his failure to recognize that the light he glimpsed at the end of the tunnel was the headlamp of an onrushing train.

Thirty-five years later another President from Texas is staring into the tunnel's maw trying to see the light. He keeps telling us that we are making good progress in Baghdad . His Viceroy in Baghdad describes the casualties as "bumps in the road". The bumps are becoming more frequent and more severe. If there is light at the end of this tunnel we sure can't see it from here.

Maybe it will be on the Evening News.