But Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, said he saw as many differences, most notably the absence of a draft today. He criticized the media for reporting a drumbeat of bad news out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"There's a level of negativism in our press today that our young troops find a little bit disconcerting," Conway said Tuesday night while addressing several hundred members of the Marines' Memorial Club. "I've talked to very few troops who have come back from theater who haven't had to go through about a two-week transition of saying, 'That's not what I saw taking place, but that's what the country's being shown every day.'"

Moreover, Conway said, terrorists are using the Western media to advance their causes.

"When they were cutting off the heads of those unfortunate individuals in the orange jumpsuits, that poor individual was the immediate target, you were the real target," he said. "It is truly a tool in the kitbag of the terrorist to have this repetitive battle damage assessment broadcast on a 24-hour basis."

Conway offered an optimistic portrait of the Iraq war even as key allies of President Bush abandon the White House's stay-the-course strategy. Incremental progress is being made on a number of fronts, including the training of Iraqi security forces, he said.

"The fact is, there is no civil war taking place," Conway said, while acknowledging "there is certainly sectarian strife" inflamed by terrorists.

He called for perspective on the U.S. death toll in the war, which has surpassed 3,600 - roughly the number of troops who died in a 12-day period during World War II, he said.

"We as a nation need to take an objective look at where we are in this struggle," Conway said. "We should not overestimate our progress made or underestimate the momentum the enemy would gain if we were to conduct an unabated withdrawal of forces."

Still, the lieutenant general, who commanded the Marine Expeditionary Force during two tours in Iraq, said he would do some things differently if he had the war to do over.

Poll: When should American troops withdraw from Iraq?

He would have argued more forcefully against then-occupation chief L. Paul Bremer's decision to dissolve the Iraqi army, and he would have tried to impress upon his superiors that they must take Iraqis' fierce pride into account as America waged war.

Conway was commissioned as an officer in 1970, during the Vietnam War.

Without invoking Vietnam, Conway used an argument that President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used often as they tried to maintain public support for the war: "There is something else, inextricably tied to our presence in Iraq, and that is the credibility of the United States of America," Conway said.

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