"The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me as I look back was it was a political war.  We had politicians making military decisions, and it is lessons that any president must learn, and that is to the set the goal and the objective and allow the military to come up with the plans to achieve that objective.  And those are essential lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War."

President George W. Bush, on Meet The Press, Feb. 8, 2004.

"We felt like we had a method that we wanted to apply to Falluja and thought we ought to let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge," [Marine Lt. Gen. James T.] Conway said.

"Would our system have been better, would we have been able to bring over the people of Falluja with our methods? You'll never know that for sure [...]"

Former U.S. Marine commander of forces in western Iraq, Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, Sep. 13, 2004.