The 1954 Geneva Accords required that a national election would be held in 1956 to reunite Vietnam under one government. However, the government of South Vietnam, now under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem, refused the proposed election and instead prepared for war. Some contemporary observers consider that if an election had been held in the 1954-55 period, around 80% of the Vietnamese population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.[17] Even "President Eisenhower is widely quoted to the effect that in 1954 as many as 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, as the popular hero of their liberation, in an election against Bao Dai... "[18] However, the United States remained fearful of the prospect of losing its influence in Indochina, which would be valuable as a military base in a future conflict with Communist China.

Inflictus no more.

Regardless of who did what or signed what in 1954, by the time the U.S. became fully involved in Vietnam in 1965, both North and South Vietnam were de facto (if not de jure) two different countries with separate governments, separate militaries, and separate recognition in the U.N.

My pedantic post is not in defense of Richard Nixon, but Vietnam War casualties did not increase due to the delayed efforts by Richard Nixon to end the Vietnam War after he became President. Vietnam War casualties remained very high, but gradually decreased starting from the time Richard Nixon became President. Although Richard Nixon maintained that he had a secret plan to end the war when he campaigned for President during 1968, this secret plan actually was to win the war, and he did not take a more pragmatic approach to end the war until the latter part of his first term. This is the reason that war casualties remained high even as these casualties were decreasing during Nixon's first three years as President. When President Nixon finally realized that the Vietnam War could not be won without taking very risky and politically unpopular measures, he tried to devise a way of winning "peace with honor", but even that proved to be elusive. Henry Kissinger's final Vietnam strategy was the so-called "decent interval" between withdrawal of military forces and the inevitable result (including widespread public realization that our military involvement in Vietnam was a failure).

Although the number of U.S. military deaths in Vietnam reached 52,000 during 1970 (not at the end of 1968), in the exchange that is cited between Senator McCain and Henry (The Angel of Death) Kissinger, Senator McCain was using an incorrect figure to refer to the number of U.S. military deaths in the eight-year period beginning in 1965 (when U.S. military involvement in Vietnam significantly escalated). It is also clear that this death toll was acceptable to Senator McCain and Heny Kissinger, despite the failure of their mission in Vietnam. The "stab in the back" theory may be used by some Vietnam veterans as a rationale for the futility of their sacrifice, but it has been exploited more frequently by dishonest politicians from Ronald Reagan to John McCain as a means of obfuscating any lessons that should have been learned from ill-advised military ventures.

Of the more than 58,000 combat dead from the Vietnam War, well over 40 percent, close to half, were recorded under the Nixon administration.

Nixon also promulgated the POW-MIA flag campaign.

To this day, the black flag flies over public buildings in this country. The effort was designed in part to rally many Americans who could not then and cannot now accept the notion of a "defeat" on the battlefield, or even, a stalemate.

Clearly, over many years, the "stab in the back" myth was used to exploit many family members of American POWs and MIAs.

I'm open to hearing an ongoing historical debate about all aspects of modern Vietnamese history, the involvement of outside nations, and the war. I've read more than one history of the American military effort in Vietnam that seeks to call into question many of what have become the most widely accepted tenets about the war. I have no problems with honest attempts at historical re-assessment, per se.

But I question the relevance of a historical review of the Vietnam conflict that seeks to bring those insights into play regarding the present situation in Iraq, in any but the most general sense (for example, insights that make note of the principle of "home field advantage", which is common to both conflicts.)

It's imperative to keep in mind that there are actually very few specific analogies to be drawn between the course of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

In South Vietnam, there was a pre-existing friendly political regime playing host to the U.S. diplomatic and military missions. A large fraction of the population had cordial familiarity with various attributes of Western culture that could provide common ground- the French language and the religion of Roman Catholicism, for instance. There was only one armed adversary for the US and RVN to contend with- the Viet Minh, supported by Ho's regime in the North. We were welcomed in by the official political regime, we didn't simply invade. A pre-existing state of armed conflict was in effect. The amount of direct American military involvement began at a very low-key level, and remained that way for several years. Even after the American military presence had grown to several hundred thousand troops, at no point did any RVN government, or faction of the government, ever even hint that the US armed effort had overstayed its welcome.

Questions of the legitimacy of the succession of various RVN regimes or the level of popular support for the American presence aside, that much is clear.

None of those conditions apply to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was, and is, driven almost exclusively from outside, by the directives of George W. Bush and his minions.

If only we HAD bombed them back to the Stone Age! Today Viet Nam would be a bustling, hard-working country moving up in the world economy instead of ... well, that's a pretty good description of Viet Nam today, isn't it?