"Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush."

The Vietnamese are scoffing at Bush's little Iraq/Vietnam analogy.

President Bush touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech warning that death and chaos will envelop Iraq if U.S. troops leave too quickly.

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Mr. Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.

Pshyeah. Bush draws the wrong conclusions from just about everything. Like his brilliant conclusion that spying on American citizens is a good thing. But I digress.

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

Bush wants to prolong anything that hurts. Think about it.

He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. "Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way," Trieu said.

Trieu must be mistaken. Professor Bush is experienced and knowledgeable, and I trust him completely.

Ow. That hurt to say, even as a joke.

Many people in Vietnam said Mr. Bush's comparison was ill-considered.

Many people in the world say Mr. Bush is ill. But that's another story.

"The president emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early," said Steven Simon, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to (Khmer Rouge leader) Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay, the worse it gets."

In that vein, the longer Bush stays in as president, the worse it gets. Whaddya say we have a policy of early withdrawal of Bush and Cheney from office? Hands?