Dereliction of Duty, Part Two
Posted by Matt Bennett, Vice President for Public Affairs Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:22:00 GMT
As the President prepared for a battle with Congress over the future of the war, he asked his national security advisor to prepare the arguments that the Pentagon would face on the Hill:
We are trying to fight a war we can’t fight and win, the country we are trying to help is quitting. The failure on our own to fully realize what guerrilla war is like. We are sending conventional troops to do an unconventional job. How long – how much…aren’t we talking about a military solution when the solution is political. Why can’t we interdict [guerrilla supply lines] better…why can’t we improve our intelligence – why can’t we find the [enemy]?
This isn’t a leak from today’s Bush White House – the President was Lyndon Johnson. Those words were penned by McGeorge Bundy in July 1965 to buck up the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Congress asked hard questions about America’s sideways slide into Vietnam. But obviously those same words could have been written yesterday by Stephen Hadley.