“If the President really believes the false analogies in his speech, it is clear evidence of his lack of understanding of the situation and the
nature of the conflict in Iraq,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Gard (USA Ret.)—a veteran of the Vietnam War--about the President’s remarks.

Vietnam veterans and national security experts joined in a conference call that immediately followed the President’s speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Missouri.

“Bush is cherry-picking history to support his case for staying the course,” said Br. Gen. John Johns (USA Ret.), an expert on counter-insurgency who also served in Vietnam. “What I learned in Vietnam is that US forces could not conduct a counterinsurgency operation. The longer we stay there, the worse it’s going to get.”

Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, echoed these comments. “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. It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay the worse it gets.”

“The speech was an act of desperation to scare the American people into staying the course in Iraq,” said Lawrence Korb, a retired Vietnam Naval aviator and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “He’s distorted the facts, painting all of the people in Iraq as being on the same side which is simply not the case. Iraq is a religious civil war.” Korb elaborated further on the refugee crisis as a result of the war in Iraq: “If the President cared about the refugees he’d let a lot more of them into our country.”

Rand Beers, a former Marine Corps Infantry Officer in Vietnam and now president of the National Security Network said, “ The President’s analogies are as flawed as his strategy in Iraq. The longer we keep the dependency we’ve created in Iraq, the harder it will be for Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future.”

Moira Whelan, communications director for the National Security Network, summarized the reaction to Bush’s speech this way: “The outcry about the misrepresentations in the President’s speech tells us that experts, Vietnam veterans and the American people simply will not buy his attempt to mask the fact the surge has failed in Iraq.”