Forget the falsity of Reid's accusations. What possible relevance could they have to whether we should complete our mission in Iraq, unless Reid is arguing our cause is unjust (which it manifestly is not)?

It's one thing to have argued against the invasion on military grounds, as in, "it could lead to a quagmire." Indeed, Reid earlier declared the war unwinnable. But that's obviously not what Reid is saying here because it wouldn't help his case: He knows Petraeus will soon report we are emerging from a military quagmire. Reid's statement only makes sense if he's arguing our cause is unjust, and he must be called on this in the strongest terms.

Besides, Reid and other Democrats have no standing to complain about Bush's Vietnam analogy, since they were the first to raise it -- albeit for other (and erroneous) reasons.

But President Bush is correct. Antiwar advocates of the Vietnam era said we fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident to get into war. Whether they're correct about that or not, the liberals' moral case against our intervention in Vietnam didn't stop there.

They said Vietnam was a civil war, as opposed to one being stoked by foreign communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Red China. They said we were the aggressors. They said the South Vietnamese people just wanted to be left alone in peace, not caring about the form of government. And they arrogantly and callously dismissed predictions that a bloodbath would ensue should we withdraw.

To this day, Sen. Kerry, consistent with his habit of demonizing the good guys and apologizing for the evil ones, actually says a bloodbath did not occur and that the communist "re-education" camps were beneficial to those indoctrinated.

The more the Democratic leaders try to sabotage our mission in Iraq, the more they will ingratiate themselves to their rabid antiwar base, but the harder it will be for them to avoid their own quagmire in November 2008, when national security issues will be front and center.