History? Who needs it!

I've always tried to limit my criticisms of the Bush Administration to that of policy and execution, but the president's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars really makes me scratch my head. By not only invoking the Vietnam War, something the president refused to do for years, but also the Korean War and World War II, Bush not only reveals a desperate and flawed defense of his Iraq policy, but also a fundamental, and dare I say, incompetent understanding of history.

I mean, for one thing, Bush works to blame millions of deaths in the region on the American withdrawal, referencing 'the killing fields.' Of course, that actually occured in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime and was ultimately ended by ... Communist Vietnam.

Safe to say that Josh Marshall and Matthew Yglesias are on the mark in their criticisms.