Funny Wording, Serious Topic

The Onion Link
At face value, this is a very amusing article. It seems funny and lighthearted, never taking a serious tone. It mocks the Bush speech that declared victory in Iraq, by describing how many "Victory Deaths," or deaths of our soldier since we became victorious, there have been. Midway through the article though, one realizes that this satire is actually not so funny.

By continuously using the word victory as an adjective before almost every fact, The Onion hammers on the point that victory should not involve constant deaths of soldiers, or huge debates about whether Iraq could handle itself if the United States pulled out, or even an immediate need to pull out. In other words, the article makes it very clear that the situation in Iraq today is not a victorious situation.

At this point, the reader begins to question how there has been any victory in Iraq at all. Soldiers are dying at a more rapid rate than before we were "victorious," the situation seems to have gotten far more perilous for our men and women since we supposedly won the war, and it dawns on the reader just how hopeless the situation in Iraq really is if this is considered victory.

At this point the article compares Iraq to Vietnam, relating the current situation to the infamous quagmire of the end of the Vietnam war. The reader realizes begins to despair of ever being out of Iraq, as all of these new insights occur to him. He sees how the people of Iraq, like the Vietnamese, do not support our cause, he sees how politics will not allow us to lose face by backing out, and he sees no easy solution to the problem.

The articles purpose was to draw the readers attention to just how bad the situation in Iraq really is, and through mock humor it does exactly that with an effectiveness that could not have been accomplished any other way.