Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld think we lost Vietnam because the press had free rein to report and made the people turn against it. Henry Kissinger said that the confidence of the American people was shaken. They just will not accept the fact that we lost because of bad political and military decisions made at the highest levels.

It never occurs to them that people turn against war when it dawns on them that their kids are dying for no reason other than stupidity and stubbornness by politicians.

Then of course, we have fools like Michael Ledeen who think that we impress the world with our military prowess by picking up a "small country and throwing it against a wall" every once in awhile. That the last time we did this, the names of 60,000 Americans ended up on the wall seems not to have occurred on them.

No no no no, Larry. We lost, but only because we left. If we had fought on, then we wouldn't have lost, see. Because once you leave, you lose. If you stay then you haven't lost. And if you haven't lost, well, then, you're winning.

See?

Viet Nam and Iraq are different. In Viet Nam, there were two wars going on at the same time. We were fighting a war against global communism and the Viet Namese were fighting a war against colonial occupation. Unfortunately, both took place in the same country. We never would have fought that war in the name of colonial occupation.

In Iraq, we are fighting a war against global terrorism. The Iraqis, the other hand, are fighting a war against colonial occupation. Unfortunately, both are taking place in the same country. We never would fight a war to perpetuate a colonial occupation.

See? They couldn't be more different.

So, what lesson are we to draw from all of this? Are you arguing that if we had stuck it out in Vietnam and spilled the blood of another 50,000 Americans and one million Vietnamese that things would be better today in Vietnam? Mr. President, that is bullshit.

Yes, this is exactly what he means.

This is why history matters. For decades, conservatives have been arguing that the Vietnam war could have been won if we had only had the will to continue.

See my discussion post on this from a couple weeks ago.

George Bush believes the "back-stab" theory the righties started using after Yalta to score cheap political points and because Stalin made them wet the bed.

Are you kidding me? The white house had the old flag of South Vietnam flying. Man, if I were the Vietnamese government, I'd have told the pilot of Airforce One to turn that bird around--unless he could find the a country called the Republic of Vietnam to land it in. In which case he was going to need a time machine.

Note added later: I'd love to have a screenshot of that WH page with the old yellow stripe flag--I couldn't find anything just now.

Not even cartoon characters come off as dumb as Bush-boy. His zeal for staying in Iraq is only matched by his zeal in avoiding harm during Vietnam. I believe the way our "hero" put it then was, he just didn't see the point of going to Vietnam. If he now sees the point, why not urge his twindaughters to do their part.

The White House web use of the old flag of Republic of Vietnam (i.e., flag of S. Vietnam that yellow w/ 3 red horizontal stripes) instead of the current flag (red with large yellow star, it had been the flag of N. Vietnam) may have been intentional? 

In 2005 NPR did a story

The California state Assembly considers a resolution that would formally recognize the flag of the former Republic of Vietnam in lieu of the current Vietnamese flag, as eight other states have done.

Experts say the trend could create tension amid warming relations between the United States and Vietnam....

The Vietnamese are very smart and would not have missed the accidental irony of Bush saying "If we had tried harder you wouldn't be in charge and hosting us."

They also know there was no chance of us outlasting them. We could not have tried harder.

Another way to lose hearts and minds. Bush could have said simply "You stood up for your country and you had the right to do so."

Is he saying, standing in Vietnam, that the U.S. should have stayed the course to win...over Vietnam?  Isn't that, well, sort of an undiplomatic speech to make, in Vietnam? 

Yes

and

Yes...

In Georgie's case stupid is as stupid does.  Run Georgie, run...

Yes I think that is right. If you read the whole transcript, I get the idea that Bush is just absent-mindedly spewing his Iraq talking points even where it isn't appropriate.

He wants to say, "Here we are after all these years, History has played out, and now we can be friends rather than enemies. This is a victory for both of us." Somehow this got transmuted to a version of "Stay the course."

As back then, we can simply declare victory and come home.

I think it's a viable position for presidential candidates in '08. We won the war in 3 wks, and we should have come home then, leaving behind soldiers to train the army and some planes to prevent massive conflagrations. Bush admin. made a mistake by not doing so, but that's what I'm going to do if elected.

It has the problem that everyone will say it won't work or isn't possible, which may be true but is sort of beside the point. It has the positive effect of actuallly sounding somewhat optimistic and/or hopeful, and not down on America, which voters hate. John Kerry actually tried a variation of this, but never made it fully convincing. It began, "The soldiers performed brilliantly..."

All Bush can do is spew talking points he's heard in the wingnut circles. And that's definitely one of them: if we had just followed Nixon's lead, and kept up the funding to the South Vietamese at previous levels forever, and then gone back in force when the North Vietnamese misbehaved, then we would have not lost, see? And that means, we would have won. I don't know how many troops would still have to be there to continue our streak of not losing, however. If only we Democrats had listened to Scoop Jackson, we wouldn't belong to the Mommy party, and Joe Lieberman would be President and Dictator of the United States of Bipartisanship.

Biden finally articulated an answer to that strawman-

We're getting out to keep your other son or your other daughter from being killed.

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada

Of course, Colin Powell didn't exactly cover himself with honor when he caved in to Bush and became the front man to sell Bush's Iraq invasion before the UN in 2/2003. He should have resigned and opposed this insanity.

Tom

Of course, how bright does that make the people who voted for him.

Tom

It would be something if Bush applied these words to the education system, social security or medicare.

Let's try them out:

1: "we need to STAY THE COURSE with social security because our seniors depend on it."

2: "we TEND TO WANT INSTANT SUCCESS from our schools but it takes years of hard work and INTELLIGENCE ON THE GROUND to get those results."

3: "we cannot play CUT AND RUN (link) when our vetrans come to the vetrans adminstration for health care."

4: "we know that only EVIL DOERS would take away our senior's medicare benefits so wer're going to deliver them because WE DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH THE TERRORISTS."

The tact and finesse of Borat.

 An "idiot savant" has one, normally useless, skill that he excels at beyond ordinary folks.   This particular idiot savant's skill seems to be getting people to vote for him.

Hoppy in Sacramento

As a victim/veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972), I agree wholeheartedly with those who found Deputy Dubya's comments in Hanoi both staggeringly stupid and hopelessly maladroit. It never ceases to amaze me how when he deliberately "lowers expectations" so as not to have to achieve anything that even then he manages to disappoint us when we expect nothing of him.

Having said that, though, it pains me even worse to have seen every Vietnam Veteran in Congress along with almost all the Republicans and about half of the Democrats let a known dyslexic chimpanzee make monkeys out of all of them. What a clueless collection of credulous lemmings! Now, they supposedly expect us to keep coughing up the blood and billions so they can continue stalling for time until some other sucker/successor to Dumbass Dubya comes along, say in January of 2009, to put himself/herself on the hook so that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bush, et al, can slither off it.

Personally, I think Americans should offer every elected official who initiated or endorsed Vietnam II in Iraq a simple choice: Either commit ritual Seppuku (i.e., "Hara-kiri," meaning "belly-slitting," in the vulgar Japanese) or face a celebratory tar-and-feathering by an outraged mob of Americans who have had enough of indulging such rank, bloody incompetents. ...

Then, I woke up and began Groundhog Day -- meaning Vietnam Redux Deja Vu All Over Again in Iraq -- one more time until tomorrow.

Thirty years later, there are several things we CAN learn from the Vietnam War if we choose to do so:

1. We were on the verge of winning the war, but in retrospect, Ho Chi Minh openly acknowledged that he KNEW that if he and the Viet Cong were able to hold out just long enough, the minority of American protestors against the Vietnam War would srive to gain a large enough wedge in American society to force the government to surrender, he would win, even though we were so close to victory.

2. Though a minority of Americans were demanding a withdrawal of American troops without victory (34% in 1972 as compared to 62% of Americans that called for peace with victory!) the government gave into a belligerant LOUD minority who demanded we leave with our tail between our legs!

3. Without any shoadow of a doubt, the U.S. withdrawal of troops in Southeast Asia DIRECTLY led to the HOLOCUAST of more than 3 MILLION people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And it also led DIRECTLY to the imprisonment and "re-education" in concentration camps of more than 1 MILLION people in Vietnam and the forced emigration of over 600,000 "boat-people" from Vietnam to the U.S. and other nations thoughout the world to avoid mass murder under the communist victory over the U.S. military! This same kind of major holocaust is also a very real possibility if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq before a stable government is established.

Of course, many of the same people, such as John Kerry, who argued in the 1970's: "Who gives a rat's ass about what happens to the gooks in Vietnam?" still argue "Who the hell cares what happens to the ragheads in Iraq?" But I think we as a nation should have a better view of helping foreign nations like we did during World War Two. But, perhaps I am just a hopeless optimist?

I would never accuse you of any sort of Pollyanna "optimism," but "hopeless," probably comes close to the truth. You have offered nothing here but the standard, long-discredited canards, straw men, red herrings, and question begging fobbed off on a gullible American public by America's rabid right wing Republicans for over thirty years. Unfortunately for America, that drumbeat of delusional dogma became "conventional wisdom" (or "syndrome" -- a symptom of a disease) among those of my generation and later who never served in Vietnam and/or learned anything of value from either living through or reading about the experience. More than any other factor, this purposeful campaign to expunge our national memory of its true history accounts for Deputy Dubya Bush's reckless gamble and historic bungle in Iraq. His comments in Hanoi recently only underline the tragic success of this reactionary domestic disinformation campaign. That he would try and sell it to the Vietnamese, of all people, simply beggars the imagination. Your feeble attempt to try and further perpetuate this sloppy, solipsistic siren song despite mountains of empirical evidence debunking it, makes you not "optimistic" at all, but rather schizophrenic, in the Orwellian doublethinking, duckspeaking sense of that term.

I've seen every American president from Dwight Eisenhower to Dick Cheney, and I've never seen anyone try and impersonate a "national leader" (let alone "commander-in-chief") as feebly or as incompetently as George "Deputy Dubya" Bush. If someone hadn't flown him to Vietnam, he never would have known where to find the place on a map. Little does he seem to know that America's decades of terror bombing and widespread crop defoliation drove the Vietnamese (as well as Cambodian and Laotian) peasants off their land (General Westmoreland's "choice" for them to flee and live or stay and die); and by the time I left in January of 1972, after eighteen months in-country, we had completely devastated the Vietnamese economy, turned Saigon into the world's biggest whorehouse, and made servicing the Americans -- and living off their unsustainable aid programs -- the only way to earn any sort of living and survive. Feeding the hopelessly disinformed American public slogans about how all this widespread societal and economic dislocation had "almost," "really," "this time for sure," "at long last," gotten us "finally," after two decades of bloody blundering, "on the verge" of "winning" something no one in America had ever bothered to specify ... well ... that kind of endlessly recycled bullshit came to a crashing end when the American people grew so fed up with all the lies and squandered treasure that they drove Agnew and Nixon from office, cut off any further funding for the debacle, and freed America and Vietnam both to begin the long, long, long, process of trying to recover from it all. For Vietnam, of course, the recovery has taken far longer than it took us because they had sustained a level of physical damage and population trauma unimaginable to most Americans.

I could go on and on educating you about America's War on Vietnam (which lasted from 1954 to 1975), but I've not enough life left to waste in such a hopeless endeavor. Still, if you really would like to save yourself further embarassment discoursing about that which you do not know the first fact, I recommend reading only the following three books: (1) "Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam," by Frances Fitzgerald; (2) "The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam," by Barbara Tuchman; and (3) "The Best and the Brightest," by David Halberstam. If you can read and understand clear, purposeful English, those three classic sources ought to at least get you into the conversation with disgracing yourself more than you did in your posting above.

I would add to your book list The Wrong War by Jeffrey Record (Naval Institute Press). Record thoroughly debunks the whole military-stabbed-in-the-back by hippies & the press argument with meticulous historical research.

Ronnie Raygun was the first to successfully begin to undermine "Vietnam Syndrome" by winning the 1980 election while stating the ludicrous notion that Vietnam was a noble cause (he even tried to co-opt "Born in the USA" for his campaign until Springteen blew the whistle on that). Reagan enabled morons like W to con enough people into believing his idiotic invasion of Iraq would "work" (whatever that means).

PS Bright, Shining Lie is a good read also.

Tom

FDR got along with Ho. When he died Truman came in and decided Ho was a "dirty Commie" and we had to oppose him (and help the French who were recolonizing Vietnam). So "Give 'em hell" Harry's ignorance gave us the hell of the Vietnam Wars (versus France first and the US second).

Tom

Of course, many of the same people, ... who argued in the 1970's: "Who gives a rat's ass about what happens to the gooks in Vietnam?" still argue "Who the hell cares what happens to the ragheads in Iraq?"

When the cost to demonstrate that we care is hundreds and thousands of American lives I strongly agree with  these sentiments. I believe it is wrong for American citizens to die for another country to achieve democracy.  No one but Americans fought our Revolutionary War. As it should be for all other countries fighting for their own democracy.  I do not want my son or daughter dying in the mudswamps of Vietnam or the desert sands of the ME to insure THEIR democracy.Piss on that!!

If that means we are leaving with 'our tail between our legs' So be it!!

At least our tail and legs are intact and not left in their mudswamp or desert. 

Absolutely!!!!

If we needed another confirmation that the concept of honor has completely died when it comes to at least one of the political parties, the sell-out of Colin Powell was it.

Bushco delenda est

At first I suspected that post was a clever Colbertish riff and then I realized...he really means it.

You can't educate people like that, fans of Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill "Worst Person in the World" O'Reilly and others who don't believe in reality.

I love the Stuart's take on Beck's comments to Ellison, which I saw on Media Matters:

Finally, a guy who's saying what people who aren't thinking are thinking.

Is it possible for Deputy Dubya (I love that!) to descend any further into a Wonderland frame of mind?

Bushco delenda est

It has been my opinion since my Army service in the late 60's (not in Viet Nam) that had Ho Chi Minh called himself a populist agrarian socialist rather than a Communist after WW II we would have happily allied ourselves with him against Mao and China and the whole damned war could have been avoided. The label "Communist" attracted the ire of American capitalists, Republicans and John Birchers.

Ideology seems to trump facts when making decisions about going to war. [Stopping wars is another case. See Kosovo and Rwanda.]

An idiot savant Pied Piper maybe?  Leading the march of the lemmings to the sea...

His particular useless skill is to continually run head first into a wall without a helmet.  I always think of Georgie (and maybe his ancestors?) now whenever I see this scene, lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g&search=Monty%20Python

There is no doubt that Truman like most Democrats and most Americans was adamantly anti-Communist. However, it was Eisenhower who sent the first advisors to Vietnam and John Foster Dulles who refused to shake Ho's hand at an international conference.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

That's an oilpatch concept. You haven't failed to find oil until you quit looking.

Of course, the company will quit looking when it runs out of money because of unsuccessful dry holes. In other words, the company President did not fail until he was forced to quit because his investors pulled the plug. In his mind, he would have succeeded in the next try but the investors bailed out on him. His failure was not his fault!

And we have a classically unsuccessful oil patch CEO as the U.S. President.

I'll leave the politics to pulling the plug on his money to you.

I say again - If Ho Chi Minh had called himself a Vietnamese Agrarian Socialist reformer instead of a "Communist", the Vietnamese war would never have been fought.

We were afraid that the Chinese Communists would spread throughout Southeast Asia. Ho was another Communist, and the Indonesians and Malaysians were fighting Communist insurrections in the 1950's.

Uncle Ho would never have accepted Chinese domination. But he used the wrong damned label to describe himself.

Wow ! George can finally say " Hey ..I went to Viet Nam, what about you?"

Admiral de Grasse's fleet (French) arrived at the Chesapeake Bay. De Grasse defeated Admiral Thomas Graves' fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake and won control of the bay. Cornwallis was now stranded....On September 28, Washington and Rochambeau, along with Lafayette's troops and 3,000 of de Grasse's men, arrived at Yorktown. In all, there were approximately 17,000 men converging on Cornwallis' camp.

link

Of course what divine law gave the US the right to tell other people how to describe themselves - or we'll kill them.

Tom

Rick says: "I see that as exactly the same basis for the two wars."

So does Bush, which is why we are there fighting.

Larry,

It appears the one ignoring history is you. Let's just take a tour of your comments:

"The United States fled the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, to escape the invading North Vietnamese Army."

Question #1: What army is there to escape from in Iraq?

Answer: None, we defeated the Iraqi army. All that is left is an unorganized melting pot of insurgents and terrorists, numbering at most 50,000. Compare that to the millions of the North Vietnamese Army still left when we pulled out.

"We shed precious blood and treasure in Vietnam and then we abandoned the South Vietnamese to the North. Politicians in that day issued dire warnings that our retreat from Vietnam would lead to the communist takeover of Southeast Asia. That never happened."

Question #2: What sort of government does Vietnam have currently?

Answer: A communist one-party state. Even 30 years later, THIRTY, much of Southeast Asia is still communist, especially China and Vietnam. Only recently have they begun using some capitalism for its economics benefits, while retaining the communist state.

Implication: There is more democracy in Iraq than there has ever been in Vietnam since the war, even after only three years in Iraq. Again, we have already accomplished far more in Iraq in three years than we ever did in Vietnam.

"You have either forgotten or never learned that the deaths of 57,000 Americans in Vietnam achieved nothing other than inflicting sorrow and suffering on their surviving family members."

Question #3: Taking the answers from 1 and 2 into consideration, have the nearly 3,000 lives lost by us in Iraq achieved more or less than the 57,000 Americans who died in Vietnam?

Answer: More.

Implication: Where our actions in Vietnam were in vain, even after 12 years, our actions in Iraq have already produced big changes and have given us and them many accomplishments.

In conclusion, I might ask that Mr. Johnson read some about Vietnam himself, since he seems to have completely forgotten what we accomplished there, and being able to compare that to what we have accomplished so far in Iraq.

We were never going to win Vietnam - it was an unfeasible operation, mostly due to the sheer size of the North Vietnamese force and the terrain in which we had to fight, not to mention the support the North Vietnamese got from the communist bloc.

Where is that in Iraq? Do the insurgents in Iraq have support from huge powers? Nope. Do the insurgents in Iraq have millions in their ranks? Nope.

This is exactly why there is a belief that this war can be won, where Vietnam failed: because they are entirely different wars who have completely different amounts of achievement. Thus using the exit strategy finally employed in Vietnam in Iraq would be ignoring virtually everything about each of the wars.

Tom

Not to quibble with you since I think you are more right than not I check the PBS Vietnam Website as well as a couple of other websites. Truman set money and military aid to the French in Vietnam. He clearly wanted the French to defeat the Communist nationalist Ho. It was after Dien Ben Phu and the final French defeat that Eisenhower started to seriously introduce American military advisors. This was a two party multi-presidential mess.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

As some comments show, we are still far from consensus on what the lesson of Vietnam is.

Perhaps Seixon and others in his corner will agree that in a democracy people will lose heart to continue prosecuting a strategic war when they don't buy the strategy. What remains contentious is whether the strategy needs the protection of controlled publicity (i.e. supressing depressing news). Nixon was correct that anti-war demonstrations were undercutting our deterrent posture, but is it also true that we can maintain a fiction as a public posture?

The parallel now would be whether it is appropriate to complain about the current war's failings or slow progress. I would argue yes, of course. Especially since war is not economic pressure or trade restrictions, it's things blowing up in your face, we have every right to be unwilling to allow our leaders to play war games without interference.

One unavoidable parallel between Vietnam and Iraq is the feeble friendly government. A dictatorship can be installed--a democracy must grow from roots. Vietnam never had a democracy, only a Catholic elite in charge. Iraq will have to hash out its intenal differences or fragment. We can't choose their future.

It is true that communism did not go away in SE Asia, but it didn't go any further. There never was much of a global communism, there isn't really global terrorism, either, only temporary alliances of convenience. Discounting the Warsaw Pact as puppets, the only true global alliance was among democracies.

That appears to me to be a similarity between the two wars, but it is a similarity in the motivations of those who are our enemies. It has nothing to do with why we are fighting in Iraq.

"Divine law?"

If there was any such, it certainly does not motivate the wars we get involved in. Viet Nam was purely a war based on great fear of some bugaboo that conservative Americans labelled "Communism."

The same fear has previously caused anti-labor activities such as the Pinkertons, the HayMarket Massacre, fear of Anarchists, fear of Socialists and Marxists, fear of organized Labor, and more recently fear of Green Peace and the opponents of WTO.

The first reaction most people have to fear is either depression or anger. Anger is more likely to spread to others and requires that the angry ones label someone an enemy to be attacked rather than talked to.

Politicians tend to tap into that anger, and direct it to those declared enemies. Hence we get anti-Semetism, anti-Communism, and so on. The Republicans are a party built on this kind of fear, and have created a straw man called "Liberal" as an enemy to aim their adherents at. They had to because Communism was collapsing on them. Today that have added "Terrorists" and "Illegal Immigrants."

But it all goes back to fear and to the social effect of politicians tapping into widely held fears.

By the way, the third possible reaction to fear is curiosity, but it is rare compared to depression and anger. The latter two are inherent in people, while curiosity is a trained response.

See? No divine law at all. There are no divine laws. Laws are a social and cultural phenomenon.

troops shooting their way out from the roof of the embassy

Again, for the ten-thousanth time: "we" [Americans] did not "lose" Vietnam, a nation and people we never "owned" in the first place. Neither do we "own" Iraq simply because we "broke" it (according to Colin Powell's unfortunately flawed figure of speech.) Actually, when we break things that belong to others we incur the legal liability of having to pay for the damages resulting from our actions. We never paid Vietnam for all the damage we inflicted on that Southeast Asian country and I see no indication that Americans will now pay reparations to Iraq for all the death and destruction we have not even finished doing to that formerly intact, relatively modern, political/societal/economic "entity." (I use the word "entity" advisedly, since I lack any better term to describe the Hobbesian Hell-on-earth that we have created in Iraq through our boorish, blundering bellicosity.)

Anyway, to put all these numerous and increasingly germane Vietnam/Iraq analogies in a somewhat different way, how about a little subversive verse from the void?

"Bagdhad is Broken"
(With apologies to Eleanor Farjeon who wrote the lyrics to "Morning has Broken")

Baghdad is broken, like with the Mongols
Sacked as a token, of a man's raves
Praise for the moaning, praise for the wailing
Praise for the groaning, round the fresh graves

Drink from the sewers, swim in the toilets
Grim reaping hewers, feed on the pain
Bagdhad is Bedlam, journalists dying
No news from Head Ram, butting his brain

Dark the night's falling, no light till morning
Government stalling, sits on its ass
Conquered and plundered, hear the mad mourning
George Bush has thundered, passing his gas

His is the flaunting, of his crude power
His is the taunting, of his new foes
Sell some detergents, open some markets
Damn the insurgents, in their last throes

Praise the self-tooting, praise all the lying
Let's do some looting, of Babylon
Praise the new order, conflict and chaos
Unguarded border, just bring 'em on!

Pictures in batches, taken with soldiers
Pod-like he snatches, bodies asleep
Ranch recreation, hiding from mothers
His urination, on those who weep

Praise for the Pet Press, sycophants scribbling
Easy to impress, so compromised
Best keep an eye on, his true objectives
Oil, votes, and Zion; none advertised

Empty suit speeches, read from a screen crawl
Written by leeches, paid not to feel
Praise the inflation, praise the huge debt load
His defecation, on the New Deal

His but to revel, in the Inferno
His the tenth level, for him alone
Dense and obscene he mumbles his mantras
Broiled like a weenie, meat off the bone

Baghdad is busted, worse off than Saigon
No one is trusted, back in the States
Praise immigration, praise red-meat issues
Praise flagellation, of the inmates ...

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Are you trying to avoid the obvious here? That Larry Johnson is ignoring history entirely?

We do have militants probably support by Iran, but that is nothing compared to the Vietcong support by the communist bloc of China and the USSR. If we cannot win this war, we should just give up being a superpower altogether.

Ah, wait, I think that's exactly what the leftists would want... For the US to retract from being the sole superpower in the world, so that China and Russia would take our place. Yes, we would be served much better with them running the world. Look at all the democracy and freedom they promote. Almost makes you want to cry. They help all of humanity's enemies, like Iran and North Korea. Nukes for crazy regimes - sure thing! Nukes for the Bush administration - no way! That's the ticket!

*Sigh*

"It isn't because we want a pro-American government in Saigon. Why in the name of God would we want a pro-American government in Saigon when we can live with governments that are not pro-American in much bigger countries of Asia? It is because a country cannot be asked to engage in major acts of betrayal as a basis of its foreign policy."

Really? why then has the left been blamed for the defeat of S.Vietnam for over three decades? Then Dr. K. drew them a timeline of a "Decent Interval" between US disengagement, and an acceptable return to hostilities:

"It is difficult for me to answer partly because I don't want to give encouragement for this to happen. But let me answer it according to my best judgment. For example, if our May 8 proposal were accepted, which has a four-month withdrawal and four months for exchange of pri­soners, if in the fifth month the war starts again, it is quite possible we would say this was just a trick to get us out and we cannot accept this.

If the North Vietnamese, on the other hand, engage in a serious negotiation with the South Vietnamese, and if after a longer period it starts again after we were all disengaged, my personal judgment is that it is much less likely that we will go back again, much less likely."

Professor Jeffrey Kimball's "The Vietnam War Files" proposed this Decent Interval strategy, but Kissinger rebuffed the claim. In reality though, it was only about "business".

"And therefore, we believe that the war must now be ended for everybody's sake. If the war continues, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam will surely lose more than it can possibly gain. Its military offensive has stopped; its domestic situation is difficult; and we are forced to do things to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that go beyond anything that is commensurate with our objective. We don't want them to be weak. And I see no prospect for them to reverse the situation. And we want to end the war because it requires now an effort out of proportion to the objectives and because it involves us in discussions with countries with whom we have much more important business."

More important business than honestly supporting public allies?

This is treachery, pure and simple. It is no wonder why Kissinger fought to have these papers remain secret until five years after he had died.

Think you're right on lots of this, but I have to disagree on some.

I think there was a way to get closer to winning in Iraq, and it was ruled out at the start. I am not persuaded, yet, there is still light at the end of this tunnel. There may be light but it ain't shining on us. We're going to look bad even if the current government holds. Our record of failing to deliver on rebuilding will haunt us, as will the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and other failures.

It is not that we look down on Islamic peoples, or that we think they aren't capable of democracy. It is that we accept we don't know them well enough to intervene without doing damage. Clearly democracies are possible, as Iran and Indonesia show.

Agree with you on religion. Don't agree with calling the madness in Iraq Islamic terrorism. It's terror of a sort, a war of sorts, simple breakdown of society into Hobbes world, sort of. It's what it is, but it ain't capital-letter Islamic Terror.

At least the Domino Theory was proven false...

Rick B,

I was using "divine law" ironically. My point is that if more Americans knew how to think critically they would not have viewed reality through Cold War blinders.

Tom

You're right. We create democracy by talking. We see how well that has worked out all over the place.... Oh wait... Good one ;)

The Iraqis have already massively participated in democracy, something that never happened in Vietnam. Partisan hacks like Larry Johnson will always ignore that simple fact, as I think you will, and keep on trucking with your "stay the course sucks" rhetoric that is nothing more than a talking point.

I would have listened to you had it been 30 years ago, but it's not.

"A Hanoi Haiku"

In Hanoi at last
Red carpet in return for
Our carpet bombing

The words no one heard,
Due after so many years:
"We apologize"

Deputy Dubya
Sheriff Cheney's Barney Fife
Lost in Mayberry

Gullible Goofy
The boy who cried Wolfowitz
Far too many times

Emerald City
Naked ruler's brand new clothes
Viewed through glasses green

Mission Accomplished!
A cakewalk in its last throes
Now a glacier race

Four years an "instant"
Nothing happens right away
What did you expect?

Broken-egg om'lets
George Orwell's Catastrophic
Gradualism

Shop till the troops drop
Buy a plane ticket or two
Your part in the "war"

Rob the future now
They will never break our will
Those grandkids of ours

Lecture the victors
About their First and Second
Indochina Wars

Where did we get him?
How come we can't do better?
We look so stupid

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006

Rick says: " but it is a similarity in the motivations of those who are our enemies. It has nothing to do with why we are fighting in Iraq."

Bush also uses the same reasoning as you, here again, as his basis for denial of the truth that we are indeed colonial occupiers. He claims we are there for 'truth, justice and the American way' also know as 'kill the islamofascists'.

Enough with the personal attacks on Johnson.

He certainly does not need me to defend him, but your spin continues to devolve the thread.

If your idea that smashing a country, whether Iraq or Vietnam, is doing some measure of "good"- you need to stick to playing Risk.

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada

... WMDs were a fairytale made up by the Bush administration to invade Iraq.

...And this is an obvious fallacy because...?

If they didn't know that the "intelligence" was phoney why did Bush kick out the weapons inspectors? They wanted war, and the fake "mushroom cloud" that Condi and George ominously threw at the country was the only sure way to get it.

Jan Knaus

I dare you to show one single comment anywhere on this site that would justify this stupid neo-con talking point:

Ah, wait, I think that's exactly what the leftists would want... For the US to retract from being the sole superpower in the world, so that China and Russia would take our place. Yes, we would be served much better with them running the world. Look at all the democracy and freedom they promote. Almost makes you want to cry. They help all of humanity's enemies, like Iran and North Korea. Nukes for crazy regimes - sure thing! Nukes for the Bush administration - no way! That's the ticket!

Why in the world would people who believe in the common good: Health care for all, good education for all, social security, protecting the environment, fairness and respectfulness want our country to fail? If humanity has any enemies it is because of bellicose bloviating bullies like George Bush that push them over the edge.

Question: Did North Korea have nukes when
Dubya was appointed President? Did Iran? Do you think labeling them as "Axis of Evil" was helpful? Do you think announcing a "crusade" helped us, or our enemies? Just askin' The best friend Iran has is George W Bush; the same is true of Osama BinLadin. He predicted every single thing that George did, and he has gotten millions of new followers thanks to the ham-fisted way that our "president" has mishandled his powers (and his words).

Don't confuse our criticism of the president for the harm he has done our county with negative feeling FOR our country. It is precisely because we love the US that we mourn what Bush has done to it, and the pitiful legacy he has left our grandchildren. Hopefully we can repair some of the damage before it's too late.

Jan Knaus

There is an excellent online essay, Why the Strong Lose, by Jeffrey Record.

"Iraq underscores . . . the overwhelming organizational tendency within the US military not to absorb historical lessons when planning and conducting counterinsurgency operations."

"I don't want to say that George Bush is a lame duck, but this morning, Cheney shot him". Bill Maher

Thanks seashell,that was an outstanding essay.

Has Larry Johnson been in Iraq??? Doubt it.

Is Seixon even vaguely aware??? Doubt it.

Damn fool, take that foot out of your mouth and read this,

Those who bought into it didn't drop it in any hurry. Elsewhere in this thread someone argued it held the line for Indonesia and Thailand, or some such.

It's the new Domino Theories now-- Domino #1 was Freedom on the March, or the cascade of new democracies that would follow Iraq. That's looking a bit tattered, but there is Domino #2, Islamic Fascism, or countries falling into it.

Foreign policy is always easier with one-stop shopping.

J. McCutchen

We lost China though

Question #1: What army is there to escape from in Iraq?

Conflation: when the fall of Saigon occurred, there was no US Military presence in S.Vietnam, other than the embassy contingent. Your analogy is irrelevant.

Question #2: What sort of government does Vietnam have currently?

Again, an irrelevant analogy, which fails to contrast differences between SE Asian societies, and the tribalism inherent in Iraq. You also distort, implying that a Iraqi democracy is a real goal of the Bush Administration. This is transparently false, or are you willing to blame Mr. Bush and his Neoclowns for the Rise of the Shia Crescent? You speak of a faux democracy, one in which only an end palatable to the US government is allowed. That is the creation of a client state. To claim that the Iraqi elections have been a democratic process is also to ignore the pre-election offensives against Fallujah, and Tel afer, which disenfranchised significant segments of the Iraqi population in different elections, largely to the benefit of the Kurds, and hurting both the Sunni and the Turkeman minorities. Your democracy is a shameful sham.

Question #3: Taking the answers from 1 and 2 into consideration, have the nearly 3,000 lives lost by us in Iraq achieved more or less than the 57,000 Americans who died in Vietnam?

Since your answers to both questions one and two were wrong, your propositions in three are suspect, but first and foremost; your simple casualty count one to one is an obscene distortion, which fails to account for medical advances between the Vietnam war and the present day, and in no way begins to account for the costs of the survivors, which you, as a conservative, will be loathe to pay for in the future, claiming it to be a waste of 'your' money, past promises be damned.

OK, now I'm going to make you jealous. I actually met Tom Robbins (as an audience member at a very small writer's conference). I told him that I humbly wanted him to know that I really want to meet Switters again.

He smiled, non-commitally. It is my hope that he will put Switters into another novel. He has a very comprehensive knowledge of what went on in Vietnam and Laos, and I thought he wove it into his books masterfully (who else would have a character who is a nun with the name "Domino Theory")? The guy is a genius! OK, I am ranting now.......... sorry!

By the way, as of a couple of years ago he was working on a book about Africa and Egypt, and I can't wait for it!

Jan Knaus

Your world view seems outdated and narrow. Neither China or Russia is preoccupied with building armies or weapons designed to do in the US. Their focus is on economic activity designed to further their interests.

Even friends of the US, like the Saudis, are signing contracts with China worth billions of dollars.

The US focus on "bringing democracy" to the Middle East via war has caused it to miss out on the very activity that could actually promote democracy in parts of the world.

As for Iran, it too would like equal opportunity in the economic world. It could probably be persuaded to give up nukes in favor of no regime change and the dropping of sanctions.

Reading your comment above was like reading the Readers Digest version of the Weekly Standard. Try reading other articles, perhaps about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), for a broader perspective.

"I don't want to say that George Bush is a lame duck, but this morning, Cheney shot him". Bill Maher

What in the world do you mean by this?

"Bush and Rumsfeld agree with you. They didn't see Iraq as a complicated issue. "

My point was that your comment, and Rumsfeld's as well, indicated that those who don't see this mess in the same way as the leaders, are too simple-minded to get how brilliant the war plans were.

Just to set the record straight: There is absolutely NOTHING about which Bush and Rumsfeld and I agree. I think you know that, and I don't appreciate your disengenuous comments to the contrary.

There was plenty of information out there, not the least of which was from the first Bush's administration that this invasion was a stupid idea. I am not Monday Morning Quarter-Backing when I say that I always thought this was a terrible idea.

Even minus the first bush administration (which has since been inflated absurdly -- it was not exactly our shining hour) pre-emptive war is a pathetic way for our country to use its influence. We threw out WMD inspectors -- now, THAT was smart! WE have absolutely no respect in the world left, thanks to this loser, Bush. We have alot of work to do, and it will take some intelligent people who understand the concept of diplomacy and cooperation to get it done. Bush may have pushed us to the point of no return. Time will tell.

Bush truly deserves more punishment than he will ever get.

Jan Knaus

The myth of sunk costs, that is. It's pretty powerful in everyday life; sad, though, that we stake other people's existent on it, but I agree that we do.

J. McCutchen

It doesn't take a far left, panty waist pacifist like Henry Kissinger to figure out that Iraq isn't ready for democracy. Hell's bells they aren't even a state any meaningful sense of the word.

As for all the wonderful things we've accomplished, I must have missed Rush's broadcast when he set the Liberals straight.

Some Vietnam/Iraq analogies hold up well some do not.

Yes the wars are different. We're fighting four civil wars not one quasi-civil war. Iraq is a pure 4GW conflict while in Vietnam conventional tactics - set piece battles entered into the mix. The Iraqi resistance forces are still largely cell-based and poorly organized though this is changing. ARVN by contrast was a lavishly equipped force which was even larger than the US ground combat forces now. SVN had a functioning government. Iraq doesn't.

The key difference between the two wars is the magnitude of the disaster. Geopolitically and militarily the mangnitude of failure in Iraq dwarfs that in Vietnam and unlike Vietnam was both forseen and forseeable:

George Friedman of Stratfor, published December 30, 2004.

"After the January elections, there will be a Shiite government in Baghdad. There will be, in all likelihood, civil war between Sunnis and Shia. The United States cannot stop it and cannot be trapped in the middle of it. It needs to withdraw.

Certainly, it would have been nice for the United States if it had been able to dominate Iraq thoroughly. Somewhere between "the U.S. blew it" and "there was never a chance" that possibility is gone. It would have been nice if the United States had never tried to control the situation, because now the United States is going to have to accept a defeat, which will destabilize the region psychologically for a while. But what is is, and the facts speak for themselves. …

If Bush has trouble doing this, he should conjure up Lyndon Johnson's ghost, wandering restlessly in the White House, and imagine how Johnson would have been remembered if he had told Robert McNamara to get lost in 1966.

"It wasn't even a fair fight. I don't know why they don't just surrender When you're playing soccer at home, 3-2 is a fair score, but here it's more like 119-0. You can't put an SUV with a machine gun up against an M1 tank -- it's heinous for the SUV. I feel nothing but sorrow for these people. This war is against one man, it's not against the Iraqi people. I just wish they would surrender so we could get it over with."

--Colonel Mark Hildenbrand, commander of the 937th Engineer Group.

Luke Baker, "Iraqi bodies litter plain as U.S. troops advance", Reuters, March 23, 2006

"One hundred miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi civilian militia engaged the invaders for more than seven hours, armed only with machineguns mounted on pick-up trucks. 'It wasn't even a fair fight. I don't know why they don't just surrender,' said U.S. Army Colonel Mark Hildenbrand.

His bafflement is the reason why the Americans cannot, in the end, win this war. Why do people fight against overwhelming odds, even when they know it's hopeless? The Colonel can't figure it out, and neither can his superiors. But any street-smart homie could tell them to expect a fight to the death when attacking some else's turf.

This war was never a fair fight. Iraq is a fifth-rate power, shrunken in military prowess by at least 30 percent since Gulf War I. But there are millions of Fouads in Iraq, and they are fighting back. Not for Saddam, or for the Baath Party, but due to the most basic of human instincts: hatred of foreign invaders. No amount of 'shock and awe' will erase it from their hearts. Even after an American 'victory,' it will smolder, and its smoke will rise up and make the very air unbreathable for the occupiers."

Justin Raimondo, "A No-Winner: The first disastrous week of war foretells a dire future", Antiwar dot com, March 24, 2003

The entire idea with Iraq was to usher in democracy in the region.

That's certainly not true. The administration was dragged kicking and screaming into holding actual elections. The idea was to install Chalabi. When that failed, the idea was to set up a series of semi-autonomous bodies that would have membership controlled by the US, with the real power in the hands of the viceroy. When al Sistani threatened to send the Shiite millions into the streets, only then were real elections scheduled.

Moreover, this false idea was only made the "entire idea" after the WMD pretext was exposed as without any merit whatsoever, a pretext that the world knew not to be true after the UN inspectors report of March 2003.

There are only two comprehensible "ideas" for this war. 1) A military/diplomatic objective--permanent military bases in Iraq. This is, you'll note, part of every proposed option, still. 50,000 troops permanently in Iraq. 2) A political objective--a war president and a fearful public. Republicans have been exaggerating security threats for the entire post-war period. Their policy positions are so unpopular that they are afraid to even voice them. Only a fearful public can get them elected. So they stoke that fear.

Of course, many of the same people, such as John Kerry, who argued in the 1970's: "Who gives a rat's ass about what happens to the gooks in Vietnam?" still argue "Who the hell cares what happens to the ragheads in Iraq?"

It looks as if someone needs a timeline lesson.

December 21, 1970
H. R. “Bob” Haldeman Diary Entry on Vietnam, December 21, 1970
Personal Diary of H.R. Haldeman

Henry was in for a while and the President discussed a possible trip for next year. He's thinking about going to Vietnam in April [1971] or whenever we decide to make the basic end-of-the-war announcement. His idea would be to tour around the country, build up [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu and so forth, and then make the announcement right afterwards.

Henry argues against a commitment that early to withdraw all combat troops because he feels that if we pull them out by the end of '71, trouble can start mounting in '72 that we won't be able to deal with, and which we'll have to answer for at the elections.

He prefers instead a commitment to have them all out by the end of '72 so that we won't have to deliver finally until after the [US presidential] elections [in November 1972] and therefore can keep our flanks protected. This would certainly seem to make more sense, and the President seemed to agree in general, but he wants Henry to work up plans on it.

In December of 1970, Nixon and Kissinger had already given up on Vietnam. This is significant because much of the VVAW protests that the right tends to blame the fall of Saigon on, happened after this diary entry:

• The Winter Soldier Investigation occurred in 1971; January 31-February 2
• Dewey Canyon III occurred April 19 through April 23, 1971
• John Kerry's VVAW statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee occurred April 22, 1971

Another significant date is Dr. Kissinger's "Particularly Loquacious Day", a secret meeting with Chou En-lai, June 20, 1972 in Beijing, where he treacherously claimed that North Vietnam was not an enemy of America.

This is significant because it occurred one month before Fonda's ignoble trip to Hanoi, which she has been vilified for as a traitor for over three decades by the right, but if Fonda is a traitor, then certainly both Kissinger and Nixon are also. Yet not one honest right-sided person has stepped up to point out the incongruity, and like a real conservative, accept responsibility for the fall of South Vietnam.

Are you seriously arguing that foreign assistance was of no significance to the Americans? If so, that is a ludicrous statement. Support from the French was absolutely critical, not so much in terms of numbers of soldiers, perhaps, but certainly in terms of money and supplies, and in the simple fact of giving the Americans naval forces with which to counter the British naval advantage.

From http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/history/A0856594.html:

The warfare in the Middle Atlantic region settled almost to stagnation, but foreign aid was finally arriving. Agents of the new nation—notably Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, Silas Deane, and later John Adams—were striving to get help, and in 1777 Pierre de Beaumarchais had succeeded in getting arms and supplies sent to the colonials in time to help win the battle of Saratoga. That victory made it easier for France to enter upon an alliance with the United States, for which Franklin and the comte de Vergennes (the French foreign minister) signed (1778) a treaty. Spain entered the war against Great Britain in 1779, but Spanish help did little for the United States, while French soldiers and sailors and especially French supplies and money were of crucial importance.

Saratoga was a key win for the Americans; it provided their own forces with a much needed morale boost after a string of dispiriting defeats, and as the article says, made it possible for France to enter the war on the American side. It was as decisive a win, in that respect, as the Confederate failure to win Antietam was in preventing intervention by European powers on the side of the Confederacy.

As Bronto1's post indicates, it was the French navy that made possible the victory at Yorktown.

Finally, there was Baron von Steuben, who was only acting as an individual, but his assistance, too, was crucial, as he provided the professional training and discipline that the raw colonial forces so desperately lacked, and made it possible for them to fight as a real army.

We were never going to win Viet Nam just as we are not going to win in Iraq. The North always knew, as the Iraqi faction know today, that at some point we are going to leave. There aren't going to be any American suburbs in Iraq, no spas for spoiled female yuppies, no little whites only golf courses.

The leadership in the north knew this during the war. Westmoreland's war of attrition actually is what did us in except in reverse. There was no way we were going to remain in Viet Nam. As far as Giap's statement goes it would not have mattered if we HAD won militarily because, in the end, we would have left anyway only much later after many more lives lost and in the face of a spreading insurgency.

Bush's position is untenable. Of course we are going to quit Iraq. The only question is will it be sooner or later. My 11 year old son is already asking what my plans are for him as he approaches draft age. Here's a kid who thinks ahead, thank God. He has already said he isn't having any of this war forever nonsense.

The mountains of Romania sound like a nice place.

Matt

Johnson should read N. Viet Gen. Giaps autobiography. Giap states the NVA was going to surrender because they had LOST the TET offensive and were losing the war. He couldn't believe it when he saw super-patriot Cronkite on TV announcing that the US was losing the war and he also saw the demonstrations. At that point they determined to hold out. Congress cut funding to South Vietnam. That was the end. I guess you're right Johnson, we lost. Because we ran.

You assemble assanine assertions to support your foregone conclusion. You would do well in the Bush administration.

No, Vietman and Iraq are not the same country and there are differences. No one would claim otherwise.

But you ignore fundamental similarities. First, most of the population does not want us there, just as in Vietnam (see the polls). Second, our servicemen can't tell on sight the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. At least in Vietnam, most of the people north of the DMZ could be considered bad guys. In Iraq, there is no way of telling. And third, we are undermining our moral authority in the world while wasting our blood and treasure. Just like Vietnam.

No, I am saying that the French did not start the Boston Tea Party, nor did they come to make America a democracy. They can to assist in a war that American rebels started.

To be precise, what you said was "No one but Americans fought our Revolutionary War"

The substance of the controversy, I think, is that that is plainly not true.

Certainly the character of French action in the Revolutionary War was vastly different from the character of the American action in Iraq. And if that had been the point made in the first place, I doubt anyone would have taken issue with it.

No one but Americans fought our Revolutionary War.

True, but we received substantial help from France and Spain.

Ah, but every investigation of the ballots has shown that Bush would have won regardless if the SCOTUS hadn't voted to put down Al Gore's illegal attempt to count certain districts that would favor him. The SCOTUS simply upheld that the final count, the one where Bush won by 500-something votes, was not going to be challenged. Bush already won.

Had Gore not tried cherry-picking votes and gone for a full state-wide recount, he would have still lost, with or without the intervention of the SCOTUS.

I voted for Gore in 2000, and I came to terms with the final result back then. I think it's time the rest of the sore losers do that too, rather than make it a point of partisan political contention that continue to cast a shadow over every election carried out in the US.

Notice how this phenomenon has now seeped into elections all over the world? Democracy is being undermined all over the world due to the pack of sore losers that made the 2000 election into something it was not. There's now a shadow government in Mexico, no doubt because they learned that, hey, in America the losing party can just claim voting fraud and act like they won, why can't we?

"Neither China or Russia is preoccupied with building armies or weapons designed to do in the US."

Of course not, they love being inferior to the US in military capacity! Give me a break. What they are doing is arming everyone around them that is hostile to the USA, like North Korea and Iran. It is in essence a continuation of the Cold War on an even more abstract level. While they keep up appearances of being friends with the US, they build up the armies in nations that are volatile and more likely to do the US and the West harm.

"The US focus on "bringing democracy" to the Middle East via war has caused it to miss out on the very activity that could actually promote democracy in parts of the world."

Yes, instead of removing Saddam Hussein and the mullahs in Iran, we should have started doing business deals with them. Brilliant. That's what the French, Russians, and Chinese were doing with Saddam all along in the 90s. That worked out real well for the Iraqi people, didn't it? Lots of democracy came out of that arrangement, right? Sudan - democracy. You know, since China is pumping money into that country for their own interests. Right? Oh wait, no. That is completely wrong. Are you trying to be serious?

Where would "the very activity" you speak of promote democracy anywhere? Can you name a single country?

"As for Iran, it too would like equal opportunity in the economic world. It could probably be persuaded to give up nukes in favor of no regime change and the dropping of sanctions."

No doubt, but then again, what about the people of Iran? What would they get out of the arrangement?? Nothing! They would still have a theocratic regime running their lives into the ground while enriching themselves and furthering their own interests in the region such as in Lebanon and Israel.

Whose side are you on man? The people or the dictators?

"Reading your comment above was like reading the Readers Digest version of the Weekly Standard."

Which is funny because I never read the Weekly Standard. Oh, right, you're just trying to tar and feather me with some kind of publication that all the lefties hate, so that I will be discredited by extension. Nice debate tactic.

But I'm seriously disturbed by your reasoning that we should just sell out the peoples of the Middle East so that their dictators will feel appeased.

I guess you'll do anything for "peace". You know, even if it means having torturous regimes like Saddam Hussein's in place. Hey, at least no Americans would be dying then. Right? To hell with the Iraqis!

Let's go get some health care for everyone at home and tell the Iraqis to go screw themselves. I'm sure that will work out very well for us.

Oh geez. They kicked them out because Iraq violated resolution 1441 and France/Russia played Saddam's side instead of trying to get him into compliance. France had told the US that they would help them if Iraq did not comply, then Iraq didn't comply, only for France to announce in March that they would veto any new resolution brought by the US.

Iraq violated 1441, yet it was France's opinion that no new resolution was needed to get Iraq into compliance. France decided this on their own. So the Bush administration said screw you and your Saddam-appeasing garbage and took the sucker out.

Simple.

The problem in Iraq was never the WMDs, it was Saddam Hussein. Without Saddam Hussein, there would be no WMDs. Saddam was the root of the problem.

I'll await your documentary evidence of any sort from the CIA or anywhere else stating that there was in fact no WMDs in Iraq. If you don't have any, how do you propose proving that the Bush administration knew it was false?

"Just to set the record straight: There is absolutely NOTHING about which Bush and Rumsfeld and I agree."

Oh Knaus, tell us how you really feel. You are the very definition of a blind ideologue. Of course there are things that you, Bush, and Rumsfeld agree, but you being a mindless partisan can't believe that for one second, and can't let anyone else believe it. Just think if both you and Bush thought Coke tasted better than Pepsi! You might be seen as a Bush-lover! Egad!

It's not dangerous to agree with Bush on something. Well, unless you're a part of the mindless sheep masquerading as liberals these days. It's almost as mature as boys in preschool talking about getting coodies from girls.

"We threw out WMD inspectors -- now, THAT was smart!"

Yes, it was. What, you wanted to go through another 8 years of inspections that never got us to a resolution? Ask Clinton about pulling out inspectors - he did it in 1998. Of course, he never accomplished anything by doing so. At least Bush removed Saddam. I know you don't see that as "smart", but the Iraqis do, even though they are killing each other like crazy now.

"WE have absolutely no respect in the world left, thanks to this loser, Bush."

Well, he certainly had good help from mindless Bush-haters like yourself who believe in diplomacy beyond all reality, believing incessantly that dictators like Saddam Hussein are actually interested in diplomacy or doing anything other than what they want to do.

"We have alot of work to do, and it will take some intelligent people who understand the concept of diplomacy and cooperation to get it done."

Yes, the concept of diplomacy that helped the Clinton administration broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, got Saddam Hussein to stop being a dick, and set the populace of Iran free. Oh. Wait. Damn.

"Bush truly deserves more punishment than he will ever get."

Like what? Come on, tell us how you really feel.

Well, you've convinced me with your brilliant reasoning. W's a genius and we must stay the course (which W now says he never said). Yuk! Yuk!

Tom

You essentially proved exactly what I said: if the recounts that Gore initiated had been carried out, Bush would have won anyways. The SCOTUS prevented Gore from cherry-picking districts to recount, and thus Bush's 537-vote victory stood as the final tally. Thus, if the SCOTUS had not stopped Gore's cherry-picking exercise, Bush would have still won by anywhere between 225-493 votes.

The Media Matters article is just hilarious, since they basically reaffirm this very fact that Gore would have lost had they counted the way he wanted to, but that in alternate ways of counting, he would have won.

That's true - in alternate ways of counting, Gore would have won. The flip side of the coin is that Bush would have won in most of the different ways.

The fact remains that Gore would still have lost if the SCOTUS had not stopped the recount he was trying to initiate. You just proved so yourself - that what I said to begin with was precisely correct.

PS. There is no such word as equivocational.

Once again you've backed me into a corner with your cool calm reasoning which has so impressed everyone at the Cafe.

Tom

Aside from your hilarious posturing after making up a word, I had a good belly laugh at this:

It does not matter whether the flaws were intentional or not, what matters is how the flaws were corrected, and they were not. That is the fraud.

It doesn't matter if it was intentional, but it was fraud? Alrighty then. Fraud, per definition, is intentional.

Every election in the history of any country has been flawed in some way. Taking that to mean that each of these elections are therefore all frauds is a bit much, isn't it?

You cited some kind of "time constraints" but that is hogwash, Gore could have called for a full statewide recount, and the courts would not have struck him down on that. He chose to cherry-pick counties instead.

By the clips in An Inconvenient Truth, it seems he still hasn't gotten over that and is still kicking himself for it.

I voted for the guy in 2000, but you'll be hard pressed to have me understand why he had video clips of that election in a movie supposedly about the danger of human-induced global warming.

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