KANSAS CITY (USA), Aug 23: US President George Bush has drawn heavy Democrat flak with his warning that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would trigger a bloodbath like that in Southeast Asia after the US defeat and retreat from Vietnam.

“Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left,” Bush said on Wednesday in an effort to turn on its head the analogy by critics who liken the Iraq war to the Vietnam quagmire.

“Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms, like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps,’ and ‘killing fields,’” he said.

Bush’s remarks to US veterans of 20th century conflicts in Asia were pounced on by senior Democrats, who challenged the president’s grasp of historical fact.

Bush’s 2004 rival for the White House, Senator John Kerry, said it was “not surprising that he (Bush) would oversimplify the differences and overlook the tragic similarities.

“If the president wants to heed the lessons of Vietnam, he should change course and change course now,” said Kerry.

Senator Edward Kennedy also criticised Bush’s speech, in which the president drew broad parallels between the global war on terrorism and conflicts in Asia, and likened Japan’s 1941 strike on the US Pearl Harbour base to the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

“The president is drawing the wrong lesson from history,” Kennedy said.

Bush also likened nation-building and military operations in Iraq to democracy-fostering efforts in Japan and the decision to defend South Korea, respectively.

“Even the most optimistic among you probably would not have foreseen that the Japanese would transform themselves into one of America’s strongest and most steadfast allies, or that the South Koreans would recover from enemy invasion to raise up one of the world’s most powerful economies,” he said.

The US president, pleading for patience with his unpopular war-fighting strategy, said those efforts held an important lesson and amounted to a valuable precedent.

“A free Iraq is not going to transform the Middle East overnight, but a free Iraq will be a massive defeat for Al Qaeda. It will be an example that provides hope for millions throughout the Middle East. It’ll be a friend of the United States. And it’s going to be an important ally” against terrorism, he said.

Less than a month ahead of a key US report on progress in the Iraq war, Bush also reaffirmed his support for embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

“Prime Minister Maliki’s a good guy, good man, with a difficult job, and I support him,” said Bush, seeking to dispel any sense that Washington has been distancing itself from the beleaguered government in Baghdad.

“Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this,” he said. “A free Iraq’s not going to be perfect.

A free Iraq will not make decisions as quickly as the country did under the dictatorship.” Leading Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was one who urged the Iraqi parliament to get rid of Maliki.—AFP