Bush finally admits Iraq is a new Vietnam

As we have seen over the last few years President Bush will say anything to maintain support for his failed Iraq policy.

As anyone who has followed his various statements about the "mission accomplished" in Iraq will realize that his latest nonsense comparing Iraq with Vietnam contradicts many of his and his Iraq groupies previous statements about that comparison. As the Democrats have wasted no time in pointing out.

As the failure of the invasion and occupation of Iraq becomes more and more obvious and a September deadline gets closer the administration rhetoric will get wilder and wilder.

However, despite the very real differences, there is a hidden truth in the comparison of the two most disastrous foreign policy adventures in U.S. history. When ideology trumps sanity in U.S. policy, disaster inevitably follows. Among the reasons for the invasion of Iraq, an obsession with overcoming the so-called "Vietnam syndrome" shaped the Bush administration policy (particularly on the part of the vice-presidential Dick and the "Neo-Cons") so that they would be free to shape the Middle East after their own image and avail themselves and their energy-policy partners (read: Anglo-American oil companies) of Middle Eastern oil.