Military admits failure in Baghdad

George W. Bush

WASHINGTON - As President George W. Bush for the first time drew parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, US commanders publicly admitted yesterday that the two-month joint US-Iraqi drive to end the violence in Baghdad had to all intents and purposes failed.

The grim assessment, by the US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell, came as at least 38 Iraqis were killed in bombings in the north of the country, and the Pentagon announced that the death toll for the month had reached 73.

October is shaping up as the deadliest for US troops in almost two years as the overall death toll since the March 2003 invasion approaches 2800.

The Baghdad security effort, announced amid much fanfare in August, "did not meet our overall expectations" and the latest surge in violence, over Ramadan, had been "disheartening", Major General Caldwell said. Violence across the country had risen by at least 20 per cent in the first three weeks of the holy month compared to the previous three weeks.

He said security measures were now being "re-focused". The top US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, was expected to present a revised plan within weeks.

Caldwell explicitly linked the bloodshed with the impending US mid-term elections, in which Bush's Republicans are facing major losses.

The same point was made by the President, who is under intensifying pressure, from several senior Republicans as well as Democrats, to change his strategy in Iraq. It "could be right," Bush acknowledged in an interview with ABC News, that the violence in Iraq was the equivalent of the 1968 Tet Offensive mounted by the North Vietnamese that helped turn US public opinion against the Vietnam War.

"There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence," the President said, "and we're heading into an election."

Yesterday the White House was playing down the remarks, stressing that Bush did not mean to imply that a similar turning point in the Iraq war had arrived. "We don't think there's been a flip-over point," Tony Snow, the President's spokesman, told reporters. "From ... the standpoint of this Administration, we're going to continue pursuing victory aggressively."

Nonetheless the allusion to the Tet Offensive was a real departure for Bush, who hitherto has refused to accept any similarities between Iraq and the war in Vietnam, which lasted eight years and took more than 50,000 American lives.

It was also an indication of how an ever more unpopular war has become an albatross around Republican candidates' necks in their struggle to retain control of Congress at the November 7 election.

An unprecedented 35 per cent of registered voters plan to cast their ballot to express opposition to Bush, against 18 per cent who said they would vote to support the President.

Calls are increasing for a phased withdrawal from Iraq.

"We ought to be able to reduce down our forces in the months ahead," promised Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary. But Bush told ABC that some of the 145,000 US troops deployed there would still be in Iraq when he left office in January 2009.


THE POLITICAL BATTLEGROUNDS

The Tet Offensive

* Marked the moment when what had been seen as a relatively manageable overseas conflict involving the US turned into something much more messy.

* Viet Cong assaults against the South Vietnamese and their US military allies in early 1968 were a military fiasco.

* In January, the North Vietnamese People's Army simultaneously attacked 40 cities and towns in South Vietnam, using 84,000 troops. 45,000 were killed.

* The size of the offensive, the dramatic increase in US troop numbers it triggered, and the consequent loss of life on all sides, weighed heavily on US public opinion and led to Lyndon Johnson's refusal to seek re-election in that year's presidential race.

* The American Embassy in Saigon was attacked. Television images of US General William Westmoreland in front of a devastated embassy strewn with bodies had a jolting effect on public perceptions at home.

* The offensive also involved a long, draining battle for the Khe Sanh airstrip, used as a US Marine base south of the demilitarised zone separating North and South Vietnam. Khe Sanh became a symbol of the war's futility, abandoned as it was in June 1968, deemed to be of no strategic worth.

* In late February, Walter Cronkite, the revered CBS Evening News anchor, visited Vietnam and told his viewers the US was "mired in a stalemate" and needed to get out.

Vietnam versus Iraq

* Vietnam: By January 1968, total US casualties in Vietnam - killed, wounded and missing - had reached 80,000. Deaths in combat and from other causes exceeded 50,000, including 36,000 killed in action.

* Iraq: The US death toll for October was yesterday at 73, putting the month on course to be the deadliest in two years for American forces in Iraq. At least 2782 US troops have been killed and 20,687 wounded since the March 2003 invasion.

- INDEPENDENT