He refuses to understand

What George Bush avoided.....Vietnam


Bush Draws Iraq Lesson From Vietnam

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 17, 2006

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- President Bush, on his first visit to a country where America lost a two-decade-long fight against communism, said Friday the Vietnam War's lesson for today's confounding Iraq conflict is that freedom takes time to trump hatred.

Embracing a former enemy that remains communist but is allowing capitalism to surge, Bush opened a four-day stay here that was fueling an already raging debate over his war policy. Democrats who won control of Congress say last week's elections validate their call for U.S. troops to start coming home soon, while Bush argues -- as he did again Friday -- for patience with a mission he says can't be ended until Iraq can remain stable on its own.

A baby boomer who came of age during the turbulent Vietnam era and spent the war stateside as a member of the Texas Air National Guard, the president called himself amazed by the sights of the onetime war capital. He pronounced it hopeful that the United States and Vietnam have reconciled differences after a war that ended 31 years ago when the Washington-backed regime in Saigon fell.

''My first reaction is history has a long march to it, and societies change and relationships can constantly be altered to the good,'' Bush said after speeding past signs of both poverty and the commerce produced by Asia's fastest-growing economy.

The president said there was much to be learned from the divisive Vietnam War -- the longest conflict in U.S. history -- as his administration contemplates new strategies for the increasingly difficult war in Iraq, now in its fourth year. But his critics see parallels with Vietnam -- a determined insurgency and a death toll that has drained public support -- that spell danger for dragging out U.S. involvement in Iraq.

''It's just going to take a long period of time for the ideology that is hopeful -- and that is an ideology of freedom -- to overcome an ideology of hate,'' Bush said after having lunch at his lakeside hotel with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose country has been one of America's strongest allies in Iraq, Vietnam and other conflicts.

''We'll succeed,'' Bush added, ''unless we quit.''

Maybe not

U.S. Searching for Americans Abducted in Southern Iraq

By EDWARD WONG
Published: November 17, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 17 � American and British military forces scoured farmland in southern Iraq today looking for four American security contractors and their Austrian colleague, who were abducted from a supply convoy on Thursday afternoon at a checkpoint operated by men in Iraqi police uniforms, American officials said.

The highly organized ambush was the largest and most brazen kidnapping of Americans in recent memory, and it highlighted the rapid disintegration of security in southern Iraq, once thought to be under the control of British-led forces.

The gunmen made off with a total of 14 kidnap victims, 19 trucks and one security vehicle, said a spokesman for the American embassy in Baghdad. Nine of the abductees were later released, Iraqi officials said.

Residents of the area where the abduction took place � near Safwan, a town on the Iraq-Kuwait border � reported hearing gunfire today as military helicopters swooped through the skies. It was unclear exactly where the clashes were taking place or who was involved.

A provincial government spokesman said this afternoon that a local hospital had received two of the kidnap victims, one of whom was dead and the other seriously wounded. Details were vague. The Associated Press cited an unnamed police officer saying that the Austrian had been killed, and that the injured man was an American.

But a spokesman for the Kuwait-based company employing the contractors said in the early evening that all five victims were still missing.

The convoy, made up of 43 heavy trucks and six security vehicles, had driven into Iraq from Kuwait when it was stopped at what appeared to be a police checkpoint near Safwan, said Michael McClellan, a spokesman for the American embassy in Baghdad. The armed men kidnapped the four Americans, the Austrian and nine drivers, most of them from south and southeast Asian countries.

The security contractors work for Crescent Security Group, one of a constellation of foreign-owned companies that reap vast revenues by protecting convoys, buildings and officials across the country.

See, once you cut out the weasel words, it becomes that much easier to understand.

So when do the Iraqi units attack the Americans? Because that's next. Of course, they'll be wearing police uniforms, because they will be the police.