« White House Press Corps Elites Despise Texas | Main | Clinton Lied, Bin Laden Didn't Die »

August 23, 2007

Dems, Old Media: Iraq Not Vietnam

Democrats and their Old Media acolytes are frothing at the mouth today over President George W. Bush's comparison of the bloody aftermath of America's premature withdrawal from Vietnam to the potential consequences of leaving Iraq before security is achieved. The line that really drew their ire:

“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.’”

This is the legacy of Democrats in Congress who cut off funds to support operations in Southeast Asia, leading to America's defeat and humiliation. This is the legacy of then future members of Congress, especially Sen. John Kerry who walked on the backs of patriots and smeared a generation of America's bravest sons for his own political aggrandizement.

It is also the legacy of the Old Media icons, especially Walter Cronkite, whose flawed and agenda-driven reporting convinced a president and a nation that the war was lost when the enemy was actually on the verge of surrender.

Only a week into the war in Iraq, the White House press corps asked President Bush about comparisons to the Vietnam War. I was there - I remember it clearly. BOOK PLUG: I discuss the White House press corps' anti-war agitation at length in my upcoming book due out in September.

The comparison of Iraq and Vietnam has been a staple of the reporting about the war - the template that the Old Media puts over it - but when Bush usurps what the press must regard as its exclusive franchise all of a sudden Iraq isn't Vietnam.

I expect they will spend the remainder of the week rewriting history and trying to convince Americans that Bush is wrong. It's already begun:

NYT: Historians Question Bush’s Reading of Lessons of Vietnam War for Iraq

Posted by jeffgannon at August 23, 2007 07:53 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.jeffgannon.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/445