ow the President has flip-flopped on Vietnam, considering that tragic war as a rationale for continuing, without end it would seem, our war in Iraq. Of course in his earlier years he was determined not to be drafted for fear he would probably have been sent to serve, by joining the Texas National Guard. He now is citing Vietnam as his current reason for asking young soldiers to die in our Iraq intervention. Quoting Mr. Bush on Vietnam, he said "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' and 'killing fields'. Has he forgotten, or perhaps he doesn't know, that the whole disaster of Vietnam did not begin with the day that the last helicopter took off from the U.S. embassy in Saigon. No, Sir, it began years before, when several U.S. presidents decided to commit troops to a foreign civil war. Staying on just made it worse and bloodier and so costly. It was never 'winnable'. In the past the chief executive has always insisted that Iraq is quite different from the Vietnam situation. He now embraces Vietnam as a historical rationale for continuing the Iraq war.