"Whatever else one thought of Dean’s remarks, and whatever one’s views are

... on the propriety of analogizing the conflict in Iraq with Vietnam, Dean’s equating of the Bush Administration’s statements about the Iraq war to the statements which Americans heard from their Government throughout the duration of the Vietnam War was absolutely, indisputably accurate as a matter of historical fact.

Much of the American population is too young to remember how it was that the combat phase of the Vietnam War dragged on from 1965 until 1975, with virtually no progress, culminating in clear American defeat.

But a review of what Americans were being told about the war as it was being waged – the falsely optimistic reports from the Executive Branch and military leaders, the endless promises of imminent improvement which never arrived, the equating of anti-war sentiment with surrender and cowardice, and even the misleading Governmental accounts of the Gulf of Tonkin incident which manipulated a compliant Congress into initially giving Johnson war authority – reveals striking similarities in both rhetoric and substance with respect to the Government’s claims about Vietnam and Iraq.

Following are representative statements made by Presidents Johnson and Nixon, military leaders, and others regarding the Vietnam War was as it evolved. These are all contemporaneous statements made at the time, and are thus free of any retrospective interpretation or distortion.

<clip>

From Contemporaneous government statements about the Vietnam War by Glenn Greenwald on December 8, 2005

Do read the entire essay:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/contemporaneous-government-statements.html