Let's trot out the AP's deepest, most tiresome wish that Iraq is the new Vietnam once more. And THIS time, all it takes is a Bush state visit to the country once enmeshed in internecine warfare to cause the AP to trot out all the old claims and prosaic comparisons.

In a long, presumptuous story Jennifer Loven, our intrepid AP reporter, makes all sorts of wild comparisons making her piece -- titled Bush Vietnam Trip Revives Iraq 'Quagmire'-- almost a parody of itself.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's recent acknowledgment that the war in Iraq was comparable to the Viet Cong's psychologically devastating Tet Offensive in 1968 was hardly the first time a parallel has been drawn between the Iraq and Vietnam conflicts.

Questions about a "quagmire" have haunted the president's Iraq policy since before a single bomb fell on Baghdad.

Sure the questions about a "quagmire" have "haunted" the President. It is interesting how Loven seems to forget, though, that the media has been the chief provocateur on the "questions", too. She seems to be divorcing herself and brethren from the efforts to destroy the war before it even began in shades of "experts say" phraseology.

But, even Mz. Lovie seems to admit that the claims were hurled at Bush before we even went INTO the country, making such claims obvious political rhetoric as opposed to truthful analysis.

But this week, amid an intensifying discussion at home about the future of the war, Bush gives the comparison debate another kick by walking among Vietnam War relics on a four-day visit to the communist nation created after American troops departed 33 years ago.

Do you think if Bush went to France the AP would describe Iraq like the 1800 "Pseudo war" with France? Maybe if Bush went to Mexico we could liken Iraq to the 1830's war there? Maybe if Bush went to Cuba we could imagine that Iraq was just like the sinking of the Maine? Oooo, I know... if Bush went to Hawaii, Iraq could be just like Pearl Harbor... or maybe like the song "Tiny Bubbles", er something?

... preferring to look ahead rather than back. Bush, too, is emphasizing economic reforms in Vietnam, and its steadily improving cooperation on trade and issues like AIDS and bird flu.

But there will be no mistaking the reminders of the country's wartime past and the U.S. military's troubled history there.

Yeah, no doubt. Because you won't even TRY to "look forward", AP. Viet Namitis is too ingrained in your genes to allow it! Our pal Lovie is doing her level best NOT to forget about Viet Nam's past which makes "looking forward" a tad difficult.

Wanna see a giant leap in logic?

While the president flew toward Vietnam, only the second president to go there since the war's end, a partisan feud continued in Washington over where to take Iraq policy.

You'll get whiplash trying to figure out where a visit to the forward looking Viet Nam fits in with the "partisan feud" over Iraq back home. But, there you have it. The AP links the two regardless of the logic, or lack thereof.

This story ridiculously slingshots back and forth between the President's state trip to Viet Nam and AP's hopes to make Iraq out to be a "quagmire", bouncing back and forth quicker than a ping pong ball in a Chinese Ping Pong tournament!

Naturally, the story wouldn't be complete without a leftist think tank being quoted on just how Iraq compares to Viet Nam. This time a member of the leftist Brookings Institute gets his moment in the sun with his "steadily growing number of parallels."

Anyway, like I said, this story is long and filled with little of interest. But it does help the AP along the mantra that Iraq is "just like Viet Nam".

Over and over and over and...