Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam

RICHARD NIXON was elected in 1968 on assumption that he had a plan to end Vietnam War. He didn't have any such plan, and my job as his first secretary of defense was to remedy that-quickly. The only stated plan was wording I had suggested for 1968 Republican platform, saying it was time to de-Americanize war. Today, nearly 37 years after Nixon took office as president and I left Congress to join his cabinet, getting out of a war is still dicier than getting into one, as President George W. Bush can attest. There were two things in my office that first day that gave my mission clarity. The first was a multivolume set of binders in my closet safe that contained a top-secret history of creeping U.S. entry into war that had occurred on watch of my predecessor, Robert McNamara. The report didn't remain a secret for long: it was soon leaked to The New York Times, which nicknamed it the Pentagon Papers. I always referred to study as the McNamara Papers, to give credit where credit belonged. I didn't read full report when I moved into office. I had already spent seven years on Defense Subcommittee of House Appropriations Committee listening to McNamara justify escalation of war. How we got into