Vietnamese dispute Bush’s conclusions

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — President Bush touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech warning that death and chaos will envelop Iraq if U.S. troops leave too quickly.

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.

“Doesn’t he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?” said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. “Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn’t prolonged except Bush.”

He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. “Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way,” Trieu said.

Vietnam’s official government spokesman offered a more measured response when asked at a regular media briefing to comment on Bush’s speech to American veterans Wednesday.

“With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the Vietnamese people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. “And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people.”

Dung said Vietnam hopes that the Iraq conflict will be resolved “very soon, in an orderly way, and that the Iraqi people will do their best to rebuild their country.”

Although Vietnam opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Dung stressed that ties between Hanoi and Washington have been growing closer since the former foes normalized relations in 1995, two decades after the war’s end.