The Israel deal: conventional wisdom: Israel wanted the Iraq War. Reality: when America is overextended militarily, U.S. support for Israel is inevitably weakened.(Dispatches)

IRAQ, IT'S TRUE, ISN'T PRECISELY Vietnam: Vietnam is hellishly hot and humid, whereas Iraq is infernally hot and dry; Americans aren't dying as quickly in Iraq as they did in Nam; the justifications used to pull the United States into Iraq have proven false even more quickly than the arguments for fighting in Southeast Asia did.

But the Vietnam comparison does help to undermine an oft-repeated canard about the Iraq entanglement: that it served Israeli interests. There's evidence disproving that myth, starting with the historical.

We should learn from Vietnam that when the ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.