But I have to ask -- what exactly do you think this sentence adds to the discussion?

I think you have a nasty habit of presenting your opinions and theories as if they are vetted facts, when in fact, they aren't. This allows you to draw erroneous conclusions and argue they are just as valid as statistics and empirically-derived facts. Your blog post puts forth the argument that public observation has driven troop levels and, as evidence, you put forth a cornucopia of unfounded assumptions.

Not to mince words: I'm calling you on it.

1) Your argument is that, quoted directly: "public expectations (in part produced my media participation since WW2) has put a downward pressure on deployment numbers." My every footnoted fact demonstrates this is not the case. Deployment numbers haven't changed all that much, we're just counting them differently. You're now arguing that "air power" had a lower casualty rate than "ground power" when, if you check here, you'll see that it's 2.5 percent vs. 2.8 percent. For the bomber corps, casualties were around 30%. this is what I'm talking about - I can pull these statistics out of the aether because I know sort of what they are and can find the information to back up my arguments. You, on the other hand, put forth a hypothesis and then feel no compulsion to test it. And yes - we bombed the bejeesus out of Iraq in the 1st gulf war. There were still nearly a million coalition troops (650,000 of which were American) on the ground. You could find that out by looking up "Gulf War" on Wikipedia, but you don't feel the need to.

3) What you "doubt" and what can be verified do not overlap. The M2HB is not troop deployed and has not been for lo these many years. As counterpoint, the M60 used in Vietnam, which was chambered for .308, has long since been replaced by the Squad Automatic Weapon - chambered for the same 5.56 as the M4. Besides which, people don't "lug" missile systems around. TOW missiles are generally vehicle-mounted, or at the least vehicle-deployed - there's that logistics chain again. Whereas the 5-kilo M72 LAW was deployed in Vietnam and often deployed by non-specialized troops, the weapon of choice these days is the SMAW-II, sixteen kilos and deployed by specialized two-man teams. Logistics again. Your argument about helicopters is a red herring - the fact of the matter is, our deployment has changed based on how we fight, not how we cover the fight, and any argument you care to put forth undermines your argument.

The rest of it isn't worth dickering. It comes down to this - you have theories, and you put them forth without testing or examination. You therefore leave the testing and examination to others, such as myself… and I find them lacking.

Thus, the topic sentence. It was a more polite way to say "you are totally wrong, and you would know this if you'd done some cursory research before committing your thoughts to type." It is my firm belief that opinion should have a basis in fact. Yours is largely based in conjecture. Had you posed your thoughts as questions, I would have posed mine as answers. Instead you posed them as conclusions, so I posed mine as refutations.

it's that simple.