By Robert Stinson
September 4, 2007

President Bush and I were in Kansas City the other day, and we got to talking; he to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and I to myself. The subject, though, was the same — what caused the bloodbath in Cambodia 30 years ago and what’s causing the one in Iraq now. I also had a brief, real conversation with a member of the VFW, and I’ll get to that in a bit.

The president told the VFW that after the United States pulled out of Southeast Asia in 1975, ” the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died of starvation and torture and execution.” Failing to learn a lesson from history, we will see that will happen again in Iraq if we pull out, he added.

I said in reply, though just to myself, ” It’s as though the man has no memory of anything that’s happened in Iraq before today. Anyway, he certainly doesn’t remember Cambodia 30 years ago.”

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