Daniel Ellsberg compares the draft of his 1965 speech for LBJ to
the words of George Bush in 2005.
Drafting a speech on the Vietnam War for Defense Secretary
Robert S. McNamara in July 1965, I had the same task as Bush's
speechwriters in June 2005: how to rationalize and motivate
continued public support for a hopelessly stalemated, unnecessary
war our president had lied us into.
Looking back on my draft, I find I used the word
"terrorist" about our adversaries to the same effect
Bush did.
Like Bush's advisors, I felt the need for a global threat
to explain the scale of effort we faced. For that role, I felt
China was better suited as our "real" adversary than
North Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, just as Bush prefers to focus on Al
Qaeda rather than Iraqi nationalists. "They are trying to
shake our will in Iraq - just as they [sic] tried to shake our
will on Sept. 11, 2001," he said.