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President George W Bush has turned the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam on its head in a speech to war veterans, arguing that America's experience in south-east Asia support the case for keeping US troops in the Middle East.
He said that the rapid US withdrawal from Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975 had led to bloodbaths, persecution of those who worked for the Americans and the boat people refugee crisis.
He argued that a premature US exit from Iraq could have similar consequences.
"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," he said, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars association in Kansas City.
"The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands died by starvation, torture, or execution.
"In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals, and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished."
Mr Bush has always avoided comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which is seen as America's most calamitous defeat. From the start of the Iraq war critics have said it will prove another quagmire and graveyard for US troops.
But his speech indicated a renewed confidence in his "surge" strategy in Iraq, which even some Democrats now admit is beginning to bear fruit.
It also drew on a long-running belief in the military that the US Congress threw away the chance of victory in Vietnam by pulling troops home early.
Mr Bush will next month receive a progress report from his ambassador and senior commander in Baghdad, with which he is expected to start the next round of a battle with the Democrat-controlled Congress over its demand for setting a timetable for withdrawal.
The report is expected to say that military progress is not being matched by political gains.
Earlier this week Mr Bush and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, criticised the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki for failing to reconcile sectarian factions.
But Mr Bush scrambled to show he has not abandoned the Iraqi leader, after his words were interpreted as undermining the man whose election symbolised democratic advance in Iraq.
"Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, a good man with a difficult job and I support him," Mr Bush said. "And it's not up to the politicians in Washington, DC to say whether he will remain in his position. It is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship."
Mr Maliki, visiting the Syrian capital Damascus, earlier responded angrily to the barbs from America, which he described as "discourteous".
"No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people," Mr Maliki said.
"Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere."
Analysts struggled to account for the miscalculation by the White House, which has otherwise been resolute in its support of Mr Maliki. But they were clear that it is hard to identify an alternative at the moment, and that Iraqi politics are so fractured along sectarian and ethnic lines that they doubt any other politician could do better.
"The problem isn't just al-Maliki, it's the job," said Jon Alterman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Mr Bush depicted the Iraq war not just to Vietnam but America's other conflicts in Asia, in Japan, and Korea.
He said attempts to introduce democracy in Japan were mocked by experts at the time, only for Japan to turn into a beacon of freedom and a major US ally.
"The ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy are the same that lead us to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said.
He also said that US withdrawal from Vietnam was a key element of the anti-US talk of al-Qa'eda leaders.
"Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently."
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid quickly dismissed Mr Bush's sense of history.
"President Bush's attempt to compare the war in Iraq to past military conflicts in East Asia ignores the fundamental difference between the two," he said.
"Our nation was misled by the Bush administration in an effort to gain support for the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, leading to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history."
David Gergen, an adviser to four presidents, said the president would likely start a dispute over history.
"Some would say if we hadn't gone into Cambodia it would not have been so unstable, and if you look at Vietnam, there was a bloodbath at the time but 30 years later it is quite a thriving country.
"We lost Vietnam because we had no strategy, and in Iraq what is the strategy? The strategy is giving the government more time but the Maliki government is going nowhere," he said.
Meanwhile, the former CIA director George Tenet hit back at criticism by the agency's inspectorate which reported that he had failed to guard against the threat of al-Qa'eda before the September 11 attacks.
A 19-page summary of a June 2005 report made public this week said the CIA's leadership failed to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with al-Qa'eda and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to the attacks.
In a statement, Mr Tenet said: "There was in fact a robust plan, marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11.
Without such an effort, we would not have been able to give the president a plan on Sept 15, 2001, that led to the routing of the Taliban, chasing al-Qa'eda from its Afghan sanctuary and combating terrorists across 92 countries." | 
