COLUMN LEFT : Swallowing a Scenario of Lies : Things are going wrong in this war, but you wouldn’t know it from the news coverage.

After 15 years’ worth of promises that America would suffer no more Vietnams, including a personal guarantee to that effect by President Bush the night he attacked Iraq, we are already knee-deep in everything the Vietnam War came to stand for.

Start with the press. For most of the Vietnam War the press--TV, print, radio--was solidly behind the government, complaining only that the war was not being fought well enough. Its role was largely cheerleading, which is mostly what it’s been doing in the war against Iraq.

Too often the triumphalist Pentagon scenarios have been accepted without demur, particularly in the vainglory over the opening bombardments. Albeit themselves powered by old-fashioned hot air, pundits like George Will hymned the military-industrial complex and announced to their readers (this was Will) that “the mighty U.S. sword guarantees the pre-eminence of the U.S. pen.”

After a week, amid this nonsense, things were already going wrong. The ferocious bombing, more than on Dresden, wasn’t doing the job, any more than Dresden (100,000 German civilians dead) did the job intended by the man who planned it, Arthur Harris of British Bomber Command, who learned his trade terror-bombing Kurds in Iraq back in the 1920s.

The proclaimed purpose of the 1991 bombing has been to wipe out Iraq’s air force; destroy its military communications system and its chemical weapons and nuclear production capabilities; sap Iraqi resolve, plus--though this has not been officially admitted--finish off Saddam Hussein himself.

After a week, after the fiercest bombardment in history, it was becoming clear that Iraq’s air force had taken only minor losses, its military communications were functioning, Hussein was alive and civilian resolve had stiffened. Boasts that nuclear, biological and chemical weapons plants had been destroyed looked less convincing in light of empty claims about elimination of Scud missile batteries. The press swallowed the usual nonsense about pinpoint accuracy.

All the crowing about inadequate Iraqi anti-aircraft fire and “unusually light” losses of allied planes concealed the fact that in the opening days, losses per mission were creeping toward the Vietnam and Korean level of four in every thousand. Such a level sounds good until you do the math from the pilot’s point of view and realize that after 100 missions you have a one in three chance of being shot down.

The scenario for destroying the Iraqi air force required that it be conveniently deployed on airfields. The Iraqis put many of them in hardened shelters under earth, which makes planes a difficult target for missile sensors and so requires accurate dropping of 500-pound bombs. This requires pilots to fly lower, thus increasing their risks. As casualties increase, the pilots fly higher and hit the target less, leveling out at the four casualties-per-thousand-mission average, which is a self-regulating figure.

Much “war journalism” so far has been reprints of arms-company handouts or faked Pentagon field tests. Iraqi military communication is being handled through land lines, which won’t be knocked out by fancy electronic hardware.

So the war is not being won in the air, which means a ground attack with the unreliable Abrams M-1 battle tank (which needs its filters changed every two hours and fuel replenished every 60 miles) and the Bradley armored personnel carrier, which is an aluminum barbecue trap. Foot soldiers will have to stand exposed for 15 seconds as they try to aim and fire the Dragon and TOW anti-tank missiles, which are inaccurate at ranges under 500 meters, the all-important distances.

Positional stalemate, bloody ground attacks and ensuing high casualties will follow from the failure of saturation bombing to do more to dug-in Iraqi troops than it did to the Vietnamese.

The best hope for the U.S.-led coalition in such a bloody stalemate could be be that the Iraqi forces run low on materiel; in other words, an embargo would take its toll. Minus the dead and wounded, this would be the peaceful sanctions that George Bush abandoned, so as to demonstrate “resolve.” Remind you of Vietnam?