<The attack was the kind of urban warfare American soldiers will be engaged in should the United States have to shoot its way into Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. When the Cold War ended, many thought that C.Q.B. would become a thing of the past. Conflicts would be fewer, and any interventions undertaken would rely on overwhelming force and precision munitions, not house-to-house fighting. Yet since 9/11 we have begun a war that may draw our soldiers into many battles involving intimate killing. What will that mean for Miller and his men?

The other motive of this article is to project the Iraqi war as a Vietnam-style quagmire, hopefully (in the view of the NYT) involving thousands of bodybags returning to the U.S. I don't think they ever got over their disappointment in the lack of thousands of American deaths in the Gulf War and Afghanistan.

My incautious prediction is that we will go through Iraq like an artillery shell through wet kleenex, and that any CQB will be a few holdouts barricaded here and there. With any luck, it will be easier to starve them out than go in after them.

It would indeed be interesting to get the soldier's take on this article.