Iraq = Vietnam

Apparently it's official. Bush is going to invoke Vietnam as the model for why we need to stay in Iraq. He will purportedly say, "Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left."

Naturally, he ignores the one phase of Nam for which there is really little debate: why the hell did we STAY so friggin' long after we knew it was an irredeemable fiasco only to watch so many Vietnamese and Americans die in vain?

But undoubtedly in Bush's eyes, the "staying-after-we-knew-we-would-lose-only-to-watch-soldiers-and-civilians-die-in-vain" part of Vietnam is not a "legitimate" point to debate.



Update: A mere 2 hours after uploading my original post, the new CNN Breaking News Headline banner blares "Fourteen U.S. soldiers died when their helicopter crashed in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said." The relationship between CNN's "Breaking News" banner and their lede on Bush's invocation of Vietnam could not be more striking.

Update 2: Josh Marshall has more over at Talking Points Memo here.