Breakfast with Ted

Ted Koppel goes to the old Vietnam analogy well to talk about how the US failure in Iraq (politely called "withdrawal") will play out. Ted has this to say about withdrawal debates:

"...back to Vietnam. Those who want to say we can't get out precipitously point to the million or more people they say lost their lives in the bloodbath after the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia."

Koppel is being especially disingenuous. He just drops this twisted reasoning out there as if it made all the sense in the world and was a perfectly legitimate. In fact it has a few little problems:

• Yes, there was a bloodbath in Cambodia after the US withdrew from Vietnam, BUT it was the continuation of a bloodbath in Cambodia begun by the US in 1969 with the pathologically named "Operation Breakfast."
• It can be convincingly argued that the US massacre-bombing of Cambodia (1969-73) created conditions for the extremism and success of the Khmer Rouge.
• Further complicating the picture was the US backing of the Khmer Rouge after the communist government of Vietnam overthrew it in 1979, a truly bizarre turn of events (John Pilger covers this in depth here).