Bush at his press conference this morning:

What makes Iraq different from previous struggles is that September the 11th showed that chaos in another part of the world and/or safe haven for killers, for radicals, affects the security of the United States.

Of course, with Bush, it’s always an adventure figuring out what on earth he meant.

I think he was saying: “We could afford to walk away from Viet Nam, we can’t afford to walk away from Iraq. Too bad I created chaos where there was none before. But now that I have, we have no choice. We have to keep letting American soldiers slowly get killed over there, so that we don’t end up getting a bunch of Americans killed over here. It’s okay to let soldiers get killed, though; that’s what we pay them for.”

Not saying I agree with more than a few words of that. (The part where he says “Too bad I created chaos where there was none before. But now that I have…”.) But I think that’s what he is saying.