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Nixon In 1975?

“The assumption has always been that Mr Bush was planning to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor and that the Republicans in Congress would go along with him,” says Charlie Cook, a leading political analyst. “But that looks increasingly difficult by the day. We could be facing a Nixon in 1975 situation where senior […]

“The assumption has always been that Mr Bush was planning to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor and that the Republicans in Congress would go along with him,” says Charlie Cook, a leading political analyst. “But that looks increasingly difficult by the day. We could be facing a Nixon in 1975 situation where senior Republicans ultimately prevail on George Bush to change course [bold mine-DL].” ~The Financial Times

I have no idea what this refers to, since Nixon had been gone for approximately four months by the start of 1975 (there was apparently some scandal) and it was not Republicans prevailing on Ford to change course that concluded American involvement in Vietnam.  It was the progress of the North Vietnamese offensive and Democratic opposition to the aid requested by Ford for South Vietnam that brought about the conclusion.  This is like an American newspaper citing a British political analyst talking about a “Margaret Thatcher in 1991 situation”–you have to hope that the analyst was misquoted and the editors and fact-checkers simply forgot to read over this story.  I have seen more or less plausible attempts to create parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, but this one doesn’t make any sense at all.

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