Bush Accepts Iraq-Vietnam Comparison
George Stephanopoulos Interviews President Bush on Iraq, the Midterms and His LegacyFrom WNT By ED O'KEEFE
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2006
President Bush said in a one-on-one interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that a newspaper column comparing the current fighting in Iraq to the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, which was widely seen as the turning point in that war, might be accurate.
(The TET Offensive was a BATTLE not a war. chcr's contention was that the two WARS are comparable and that the Iraq WAR is worse than the Vietnam WAR. -- j)
Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times today that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.
"He could be right," the president said, before adding, "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election." (So a comparitive opinion of a single event among many events of the whole is a concession that the entire war is the same as Vietnam? --j)
"George, my gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict enough damage that we'd leave," Bush said. "And the leaders of al Qaeda have made that very clear. Look, here's how I view it. First of all, al Qaeda is still very active in Iraq. They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment sectarian violence. They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause government to withdraw." (How does the highlighted text compare to Vietnam? Where was the fomentation of sectarian violence by the Communists? --j)
Beat me to it. 
Vietnam still has lessons to teach us, to bad most of us can't or won't learn them.
