He may have been talking in very narrow terms, but perhaps George Bush has become his own Walter Cronkite in acknowledging in an interview last night (watch it here) that there could be parallels between Vietnam and Iraq.
Famously, in the wake of the Tet offensive of 1968 in Vietnam - when the North Vietnamese went on all-out attack - the legendary US television anchor told America that its troops were locked in stalemate.
Even though the Tet offensive is now considered a military failure, it was not thought so at the time, and the escalation in violence is widely believed to have been a turning point for public opinion in the US against the war. President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." Five weeks later he pulled out of running for re-election.
Mr Bush can't run for re-election but his Republican party are facing increasingly tricky midterm congressional elections on November 7, and the problem of Iraq looms ever larger. The death rate of US troops has recently increased and the Bush administration is scrabbling around for a new Iraq policy.
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