But anjin-san is simply ignorant of history

I suggest you read the Pulitzer Prize winning "Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam" by Frances FitzGereald, and then get back to me on the subject of history.

And if this were the case, what would it mean? That a GOP president screwed the pooch and lost the war?

Even if we are to accept your argument, this statement holds water. According to you, an impotent President Ford stood by helplessly while the war was lost. Sounds like a screwed pooch to me...

If you are going to call people ignorant, you should probably state your case in a more bullet proof manner :)

Under Nixon's "Vietnamization" program, American ground forces were successfully withdrawn from South Vietnam by 1973, with the South Vietnamese military taking over the main role in their country's self-defense from both the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. The South did, however, still rely heavily on U.S. air and naval support, which could be provided without risk to the same large numbers of American lives that had produced tens of thousands of American casualties earlier in the war; and they were likewise reliant on continuing American financial and millitary materiel support.

If we're lucky, Iraq will be at about that same point in another year or two.

With that continuing American support (but not including American ground forces), South Vietnam successfully resisted a full-scale Northern attack around Easter of 1973.

After Nixon was forced to resign due to Watergate, however, the Democratic Congress rapidly forced America to break its solemn commitments to South Vietnam, over the livid and repeated protests of an unwilling Gerry Ford. By the late fall of 1974, the Democratic Congress overwrote his veto of their measures cutting off both military and financial aid to South Vietnam. No longer would our ally receive air and naval support; no longer would it receive funds or war materiel. The heavy Democratic gains in the 1974 congressional elections only cemented their decision and widened their veto-proof majority in January 1975.

The direct result of the betrayal by Congress was a crisis of confidence that swept through the South Vietnamese forces. During a relentless North Vietnamese Army assault in the spring of 1975, South Vietnamese units that had performed splendidly a year earlier turned and ran. The Communists swept through the South, quickly capturing Saigon, directly leading to the famous photographs of the panicked crowds fighting to board the last helicopters from the roof of the American embassy, and other helicopters having to be pushed from the decks of our aircraft carriers to make room for refugees.

Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were imprisoned for "re-education"; millions of South Vietnamese fled as "boat people," among whom tens of thousands more died. Laos became a North Vietnamese satrap, with tens of thousands imprisoned. And the resulting power vacuum in Cambodia led directly to the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields in which millions were executed or simply starved. Vietnam and its erstwhile ally and supplier, but ancient enemy — Red China — were quickly back in a series of limited wars with each other (which were in large part proxy wars between the Red Chinese and the Soviets, whose split Nixon had played like a Stradivarius). Fortunately, other non-Communist countries that had been deemed "at risk" as potential "dominoes" during the 1960s -- including Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia -- were strong enough by the mid-1970s to resist the Communist tide by then, but only at the cost of increased repression by conservative, anti-communist governments there.

The chaos from the Democratic Congress' shameful abandonment of the South Vietnamese, in other words, much resembled what would likely happen were we precipitously to withdraw now from Iraq -- except that Iraq sits atop a sizable chunk of the world's oil supplies, and its avaricious neighbors like Iran, also rich with petro-dollars, are in the grip of an even more deadly ideology than Communism and are seeking the nukes that, thank God, the North Vietnamese never had.

Bithead is wrong to suggest that we were "two weeks away from victory" when we pulled out. It was never that simple; nothing was ever "two weeks away." But anjin-san is simply ignorant of history, and of its relevance to today. Any American who is not ashamed of the unilateral betrayal of South Vietnam by the Democratic Congress of 1974-1975 and the results of that betrayal is either hiding from the facts and/or deceiving himself.

And if this were the case, what would it mean? That a GOP president screwed the pooch and lost the war?

No, that a liberal Republican made the mistake of listening to the left.

Probably done for the purpose of getting Obama to name Hilary as his VP candidate.

My guess is the economy will be the deciding factor. It is now tanking with speed and fury that is rather sobering. historically, the party of the sitting president gets blamed for a bad economy.

I agree entirely with the first sentence of your comment.

I respectfully point out that the Party of Change and Hope is pretty up front that their intentions upon wrapping up the Executive and filibuster-proof majorities in the House and Senate are about attacking corporations, prohibiting increases in domestic petroleum production, taxing the hell out of everybody, doing nothing to increase nuke generation capacity, and socializing health care.

That's all before they open the borders, surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan (if Bush doesn't steal a march on them, which I am fairly certain he's about to do), and fail to address the coming melt down of Social Security and (the ongoing meltdown) of Medicare.

Both parties are culpable for what is about to happen to our country... BUT we elected them. So a good portion of the blame comes right home.

However, the Democrats are the only people whose published platform is indistinguishable from an enemy's plan to destroy us.

I'd have to start drinking again to vote FOR McCain. Against Obama... not so much.

They phoned up 600 people to ask them how they planned to vote. 30 had been Clinton supporters for McCain. 20 of them said they were supporting Obama, 5 said they were supporting McCain, and 5 said they weren't voting. Then they did the same thing a month later, got another 30-ish people, and 18 said they were supporting Obama, 4 said they were supporting McCain and 8 said they weren't voting. Hey presto, we've got a story.

Key points being: Titchy sub-samples have massive margins of error, and most journalists don't understand statistics.

Since K means thousand, then that number lost in Iraq would be 4,000,000.

We know now, thanks to fairly recently interviews with former VC commanders, that we were about two weeks form victory when we pulled out

.

I hate to pop your bubble, but reading things on right wing rant sites does not make them so.

And if this were the case, what would it mean? That a GOP president screwed the pooch and lost the war?

Too bad you did not apply this wisdom to Vietnam/Iraq.

Well, it's funny you mention that.
We HAVE, in fact learned that lesson. We listened to the Democrats and the anti-war flakes last time out. We know now, thanks to fairly recently interviews with former VC commanders, that we were about two weeks form victory when we pulled out. In listening to the left, we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

This time, we didn't make that mistake.

But defiantly too bad for the 4000K plus Americans and countless Iraqis who have died in Bush's war...

I am just guessing here, but I figure you attended public schools, and never majored in Mathematics at the Albert Einstien Institute.

Seems more to me, you went to the Frank Einstien school of public debate.