Vietnamese stunned that Bush invoked them to keep Iraq war going

Aside from all the historians across the country who have been scratching their heads ever since Bush's VFW Convention speech, the Vietnamese people are down-right offended.  Earlier this week, to help justify the indefinite continuation of the Iraq war, President Bush invoked Vietnam:

"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America'swithdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonieswould add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 'reeducationcamps' and 'killing fields,' " Bush told a receptive audience at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention.

As Bush did before the war, he is trying to justify the continuation of the war on humanitarian grounds.  In other words, we are helping people by remaining at war.  It takes Bush's loyal 23% to rhetorically spin a talking point like that while maintaining a straight face.

The Vietnamese were not to thrilled though, especially regarding the claim that less people would have died if the US had stayed in Vietnam:

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraqis strong, said Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloodySoutheast Asian conflict.

"Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer,they would have killed more people?" Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteranof the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam, saidThursday. "Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged exceptBush."

U.S. troops could never have prevailed in Vietnam, he said.

"Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way," Trieu said.

Besides, for the White House's sake, it's not a smart political strategy to have President Bush give revisionist history lessons.  They are so easy to refute.