> pulling out of Vietnam brought the death of millions of people..
> that's the comparison.

>
>
> yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1187855085.939266.63520@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

>> On Aug 23, 3:00 am, "Sid9" bellsouth.net> wrote:

>>> August 23, 2007
>>> 'Free Iraq' Is Within Reach, Bush Declares
>>> By JIM RUTENBERG, SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARK MAZZETTI
>>> KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 22 - President Bush delivered a rousing
>>> defense of his Iraq policy on Wednesday, telling a group of veterans
>>> that "a free Iraq"
>>> is within reach and warning that if Americans succumb to "the allure
>>> of retreat," they will witness death and suffering of the sort not
>>> seen since
>>> the Vietnam War.
>>>
>>> "Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America's
>>> presence and
>>> that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end," Mr. Bush
>>> declared in
>>> a 45-minute speech before a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention
>>> here. He added, "The world would learn just how costly these
>>> misimpressions would
>>> be."
>>>
>>> In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is
>>> challenging the
>>> historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative
>>> repercussions for the United States and its allies.
>>>
>>> The speech was the beginning of an intense White House initiative to
>>> shape
>>> the debate on Capitol Hill in September, when the president's troop
>>> buildup
>>> will undergo a re-evaluation. It came amid rising concerns in
>>> Washington over the performance of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
>>> al-Maliki of Iraq, who has
>>> made little progress toward bridging the sectarian divide in his
>>> country.
>>>
>>> On Thursday, the administration is planning to make public parts of
>>> a sober
>>> new report by American intelligence agencies expressing deep doubts
>>> that the
>>> Maliki government can overcome sectarian differences. Government
>>> officials
>>> who have seen the report say it gives a bleak outlook on the chances
>>> Mr. Maliki can meet milestones intended to promote unity in Iraq.
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, as a second Democratic senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton
>>> of New
>>> York, called for Mr. Maliki to quit, he lashed out at American
>>> lawmakers who
>>> have questioned his competence. Mr. Bush - who on Tuesday confessed
>>> to "a certain level of frustration" with the Iraqi government -
>>> responded by using
>>> Wednesday's speech to try to shore up Mr. Maliki. "Prime Minister
>>> Maliki is
>>> a good guy, a good man with a difficult job," he said, "and I
>>> support him."
>>>
>>> All this month, members of Congress have been visiting Iraq to make
>>> their own assessments of the troop buildup and Mr. Maliki. While
>>> Republicans and
>>> even some Democrats say they are seeing military gains, Democratic
>>> leaders
>>> and party strategists, citing the lack of political progress, vowed
>>> Wednesday to renew their efforts to end the war. Mr. Bush vowed to
>>> resist them. "We stand with the Iraqis at this difficult hour," he
>>> said.
>>>
>>> As the battle lines are drawn, a new advertising war is beginning to
>>> heat up, focusing on lawmakers, especially Republicans, who face
>>> tough re-election campaigns. On Wednesday, a new interest group,
>>> Freedom's Watch,
>>> led by allies of the Bush administration - including Sheldon G.
>>> Adelson, a
>>> Las Vegas casino magnate who ranks sixth on Forbes Magazine's lists
>>> of the
>>> world's billionaires - began a monthlong, $15 million campaign
>>> intended to
>>> support the president's policy.
>>>
>>> Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to Mr. Bush and a member of
>>> the group's
>>> board, said the ads would run in 20 states, in more than five dozen
>>> Congressional districts. "Anybody who is considering switching their
>>> vote is
>>> somebody we care about," he said.
>>>
>>> Presidential candidates are also staking out their positions. The
>>> president
>>> was just one of several elected officials who spoke before the
>>> Veterans of
>>> Foreign Wars this week. Two top Democratic contenders - Senator
>>> Clinton and
>>> Senator Barack Obama of Illinois - have appeared, as has Senator
>>> John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
>>>
>>> Military audiences are generally safe for Mr. Bush and Wednesday's
>>> crowd came through with repeated applause. But the views expressed
>>> by the former
>>> soldiers in interviews here were hardly uniform. One, Charles
>>> Muckleston, a
>>> 77-year-old former Army sergeant from Manchester, N.J., who fought
>>> in Korea,
>>> said he did not bother to go to the hall to hear Mr. Bush. "It
>>> didn't seem
>>> worthwhile," he said. But Todd Struwe, 44, who served on the Korean
>>> Peninsula, said Mr. Bush's address was "the best one we've heard so
>>> far from
>>> all of the candidates."
>>>
>>> In the speech, Mr. Bush sought to paint the conflict in Iraq in the
>>> broader
>>> context of American involvement in Asia. In one fell swoop, the
>>> president likened the Iraq war to earlier conflicts in Japan and
>>> Korea - which produced democratic allies of the United States - as
>>> well as to the war in
>>> Vietnam, asserting that the American pullout there 32 years ago led
>>> to tens
>>> of thousands of deaths in that country and Cambodia. "The question
>>> now before us," he said, referring to Japan and Korea, "comes down
>>> to this: Will
>>> today's generation of Americans resist the deceptive allure of
>>> retreat and
>>> do in the Middle East what veterans in this room did in Asia?"
>>>
>>> And, in a passage that set off a bitter debate even before the
>>> speech's end,
>>> Mr. Bush suggested a quick pullout from Iraq could bring the kind of
>>> carnage
>>> that drenched Southeast Asia three decades ago.
>>>
>>> "In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which
>>> hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture
>>> and execution," Mr.
>>> Bush said. "In Vietnam, former allies of the United States, and
>>> government
>>> workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison
>>> camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more
>>> fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their
>>> graves in the South China Sea."
>>>
>>> With his comments Mr. Bush was doing something few major politicians
>>> of either party have done in a generation: rearguing a conflict that
>>> ended more
>>> than three decades ago but has remained an emotional touch point.
>>>
>>> Democrats, not surprisingly, rejected the comparison, including John
>>> Kerry,
>>> the Vietnam War veteran who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Bush in
>>> 2004. "Invoking the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy
>>> in Iraq is as
>>> irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those
>>> wars," Mr.
>>> Kerry said.
>>>
>>> At the same time, Mr. Bush was giving rare political voice to those
>>> - many
>>> of whom were in the hall - who believe the American pullout was a
>>> mistake.
>>>
>>> "Amen," said Bob McKay, 63, who served in the Army during the
>>> Vietnam War.
>>> "That's what I fear most: We're going to pull another Vietnam."
>>>
>>> But two World War II veterans, John Rocca and Anthony Cellucci, said
>>> they had qualms about Mr. Bush's speech. They said they agreed with
>>> Mr. Obama's
>>> call for United States troops to refocus their efforts to find Osama
>>> bin Laden and his deputies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
>>>
>>> "I don't think we belong over there," Mr. Cellucci said. "Bring the
>>> troops
>>> home." He added, "You fight a war, you fight it and get it over
>>> with."
>>>
>>> As the end of the Congressional recess draws closer, the debate over
>>> Iraq policy will only intensify, and the new intelligence
>>> assessment, called "Prospects for Iraq's Stability" is likely to
>>> play an important role in that
>>> discussion. Officials said the assessment concluded that Mr. Maliki
>>> retained
>>> support among Shiite groups in part because putting together a new
>>> government would be arduous. Officials in Washington and Baghdad for
>>> months
>>> have said that any military gains would be ephemeral if Iraqi
>>> politicians were not able to bridge sectarian divides.
>>>
>>> The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report
>>> will not be
>>> issued until Thursday, and spokesmen for both the White House and
>>> the director of national intelligence declined to comment. "The
>>> report says that
>>> there's been little political progress to date, and it's very gloomy
>>> on the
>>> chances for political progress in the future," said one
>>> Congressional official with knowledge of its contents.
>>>
>>> The new report also concludes that the American military has had
>>> success in
>>> recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country,
>>> according
>>> to officials who have read it.
>>>
>>> The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the
>>> next 6 to
>>> 12 months, is "more dire in its assessments" than the administration
>>> has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior
>>> official who
>>> has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on
>>> Wednesday, that
>>> an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.
>>>
>>> "It doesn't take a policy position," one official said. "But it
>>> leaves you
>>> with the sense that what we've been doing hasn't been working, but
>>> we can't
>>> let up, or it'll get worse."

>>
>> What a DESPERATE Move------Comparing a Historical Defeat with a
>> PROBABLE DEFEAT in PROGRESS. This is the Proof that Bush shows a
>> COMPLETE LACK of Historical Perspective or Knowledge. The man has GOT
>> TO GO !!!!
>>

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