Iraq is George W. Bush's Vietnam

"This has been tough weeks for that country."

With those mangled eight words, President Bush began his pathetic news conference on Iraq. It was downhill from there. Hastily scheduled to stop the bleeding from weeks of criticism about his inaction before Sept. 11 and his rush to war in Iraq, the president's prime-time appearance was instead a total bust. He didn't answer one single question. He rambled incoherently. And he proved himself hopelessly out of touch with reality.

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One year later, not one of the reasons Bush gave as imperatives for invading Iraq has proven to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons, no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden – and no way Iraq was a threat to the United States. Nothing he said about postwar Iraq has come to pass, either. American troops were not greeted as liberators, and oil revenues are not paying for Iraq's reconstruction. American taxpayers are.

Yet Bush stubbornly refuses to admit he got anything wrong. He still contends that Saddam Hussein was a serious threat. He still claims Iraq had long-range missiles. He still believes Hussein was aiding al-Qaida. He thinks Iraqis, with few exceptions, welcome American troops. He says there's plenty of money from Iraqi oil. And he still insists that, someday, we'll find those WMD. This guy is living on another planet.

The president also refuses to acknowledge any personal responsibility for failure to take preventive measures before Sept. 11. "Had we had any inkling that this was going to happen," he tried to assure the nation, "we would have done everything in our power to stop the attack." Yet the evidence is clear: He had plenty of warnings, and did nothing.

On Aug. 6, 2001, barely a month before Sept. 11, President Bush received a CIA briefing entitled "Bin Laden To Strike in U.S." The memo documented bin Laden's oft-cited determination to attack targets in Washington and New York, using hijacked airplanes. It even repeated a May 2001 warning that al-Qaida agents were in the New York area planning an attack with major explosives. The president took no action. He went fishing instead.

And the morning following his ill-fated news conference, the 9-11 Commission released a report showing that the Aug. 6 briefing was just one of many times Bush had been warned of al-Qaida.

In April and May 2001, he had been handed similar documents, called: "Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations," "Bin Laden Network's Plans Advancing" and "Bin Laden Threats Are Real." Before Sept. 11, he also received over 40 personal briefings from CIA Director George Tenet about the growing al-Qaida threat to the United States. Again, he did nothing. The first Bush administration Cabinet meeting with al-Qaida on the agenda was not held until Sept. 4, 2001 – and Bush wasn't even present.

We've reached the point where we just can't believe anything Bush says about Sept. 11 or Iraq anymore. He can't say he did everything to protect us from terrorism, because he didn't. He can't say the war in Iraq was justified, because it wasn't. He can't say postwar Iraq is going according to plan – with 534 Americans killed since May 1, 2003, when he declared "mission accomplished" – because there is no plan.

Nor can he deny Iraq is another Vietnam. Of course, there are obvious differences. The war in Vietnam lasted 10 years and cost 58,000 American lives. The war in Iraq has lasted only 13 months and, as of April 14, taken 672 American lives. But there are also clear parallels.

In Vietnam, we were not fighting an identified army – we were fighting organized guerillas. In Vietnam, American soldiers couldn't tell the enemy from the rest of the population. In Vietnam, we were an unwanted, occupying army far from home. And in Vietnam, we had no strategy for how to get the hell out. The same is true of the quagmire we now call Iraq.

Poor George W. Bush. He wanted to be the next Ronald Reagan, but it looks like he'll become the next Lyndon Johnson instead. Except worse. At least LBJ inherited the Vietnam mess from John Kennedy. The Iraq mess is all President Bush's own making. He has nobody to blame but himself. And we have no one to blame – but him.