Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
August 22, 2007
Pg. 5
Address To VFW Today Will Warn Against Consequences Of Withdrawal
By David Jackson and Matt Kelley, USA Today
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — President Bush plans to argue today that a hasty "retreat" from Iraq would lead to the kinds of bloodbaths that followed U.S. withdrawals from Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s.
In a speech he is to deliver here at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention, Bush will also say that the recent increase of U.S. troops is producing military progress in the war-racked country.
"Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?" Bush says in prepared remarks released by the White House late Tuesday.
The VFW speech and another address Bush is scheduled to deliver next week to the American Legion convention come as supporters and critics of the war are seeking to influence members of Congress ahead of a report to be delivered next month by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the war's progress.
With Congress in recess for the summer, the debate over Iraq policy has moved from the Capitol to the airwaves with direct appeals to the public through multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns.
Freedom's Watch, a conservative group, plans to launch a $15 million advertising campaign in 20 states today. The group's spokesman, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, says the goal is to tell people that the buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq is working.
"We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: Don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective," Fleischer says.
One of the main voices in the anti-war movement is a coalition called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, which includes such liberal groups as MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress and the Service Employees International Union. The coalition is running advertisements attacking senators and representatives who support Bush's Iraq policies. "Our ads are about defining the Republicans in the minds of the voters as sticking with Bush on Iraq," says Tom Matzzie, director of the ad campaign.
Matzzie said the group spent $12 million on its "Iraq summer" campaign, which includes political organizing on the local level.
Bush has repeatedly warned that a withdrawal from Iraq would create a terrorist haven in that country. According to the excerpts, he will expand that argument to hark back to "a complex and painful subject," the Vietnam War.
Regardless of how one feels about U.S. involvement in that war, Bush says, the U.S. withdrawal in the mid-1970s did not end the killing in Vietnam or in neighboring Cambodia.
"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields,' " Bush's speech says.
Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow said Bush is reaching for historical analogies that don't track. He said, "Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each other," as in Iraq. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge toppled a U.S.-backed government.
"Does he think we should have stayed in Vietnam?" Karnow asked.
Bush also plans to cite democracies in postwar Japan and South Korea as examples of what Iraq may become.
August 22, 2007
Pg. 5
Address To VFW Today Will Warn Against Consequences Of Withdrawal
By David Jackson and Matt Kelley, USA Today
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — President Bush plans to argue today that a hasty "retreat" from Iraq would lead to the kinds of bloodbaths that followed U.S. withdrawals from Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s.
In a speech he is to deliver here at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention, Bush will also say that the recent increase of U.S. troops is producing military progress in the war-racked country.
"Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?" Bush says in prepared remarks released by the White House late Tuesday.
The VFW speech and another address Bush is scheduled to deliver next week to the American Legion convention come as supporters and critics of the war are seeking to influence members of Congress ahead of a report to be delivered next month by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the war's progress.
With Congress in recess for the summer, the debate over Iraq policy has moved from the Capitol to the airwaves with direct appeals to the public through multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns.
Freedom's Watch, a conservative group, plans to launch a $15 million advertising campaign in 20 states today. The group's spokesman, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, says the goal is to tell people that the buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq is working.
"We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: Don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective," Fleischer says.
One of the main voices in the anti-war movement is a coalition called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, which includes such liberal groups as MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress and the Service Employees International Union. The coalition is running advertisements attacking senators and representatives who support Bush's Iraq policies. "Our ads are about defining the Republicans in the minds of the voters as sticking with Bush on Iraq," says Tom Matzzie, director of the ad campaign.
Matzzie said the group spent $12 million on its "Iraq summer" campaign, which includes political organizing on the local level.
Bush has repeatedly warned that a withdrawal from Iraq would create a terrorist haven in that country. According to the excerpts, he will expand that argument to hark back to "a complex and painful subject," the Vietnam War.
Regardless of how one feels about U.S. involvement in that war, Bush says, the U.S. withdrawal in the mid-1970s did not end the killing in Vietnam or in neighboring Cambodia.
"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields,' " Bush's speech says.
Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow said Bush is reaching for historical analogies that don't track. He said, "Vietnam was not a bunch of sectarian groups fighting each other," as in Iraq. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge toppled a U.S.-backed government.
"Does he think we should have stayed in Vietnam?" Karnow asked.
Bush also plans to cite democracies in postwar Japan and South Korea as examples of what Iraq may become.