Within minutes of Bush's insult (lying about his supporting the soldiers, and continuing to lie about his military "service") to the VFW, the Republican propagandists are lying every which way they can, any where they can. Each showed up at MSNBC, CNN, and Faux News with prepared talking points and specious information that they had to have received before Bush ever spoke.
Iraq is not Viet Nam. The witdrawal from Viet Nam was not rushed, precipitous, unplanned, or a failure. In fact, it was successful.
What? Yes, successful.
In 1969, shortly after inauguration, Nixon and Kissinger announced their plan for withdrawing the US (as promised) from the war. Back then the propaganda campaign was "Peace With Honor." Of course, honor to the Nixon administration included indiscriminate carpet bombing of the North, and illegal incursions into Cambodia and Laos (and we wonder why the Iranians feel threatened?). But there actually was some sort of "master plan" and it was called Vietnamization.
Vietnamization included the Paris Peace talks, rebuilding and training the RVN Army, reinvigorating the South's population ("hearts and minds"), pushing the Viet Cong out of the South, and demoralizing the North's civilian population. It can be argued that, individually, some of this was successful. Unfortunately, the two most important, building an effective army in the South and turning the North against the war failed miserably. Nonetheless, the level of US troops dropped over the next few years, especially by 1972.
According to The American War Library ("Established By Vets For Vets Since 1988"), by 1972 troop levels were down to less than 25,000, and by the end of 1973 there were less than 100 troops (officially) serving in Viet Nam. In 1974 the US was barely providing Viet Nam with any legitimate or large scale material support. So it was almost two years from the almost full withdrawal of troops until the fall in April 1975.
Many historians say that the reason the South fell - and fell fast, was that the corrupt government of Nguyen Van Thieu allowed the RVN to deteriorate, expected the US to recommit troops in case of an emergency, was wholly unprepared for any large scale attack, and ignored or misunderstood both the North's build up and the intelligence about it (sound familiar, Condeleezza?).
So now the Republicans' professional propagandists liars are on the attack, not only lying about the current quagmire in Iraq, but lying about a quagmire that was successfully (as possible) disengaged more than 30 years ago. This just shows that the Republican Credo is "Win if you can; lose if you must. But in any case, LIE!"
They ought to be ashamed, but we know they're not...