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Nov. 18, 1005 - Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha is a burly ex-Marine with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts who rarely speaks to the press. But he came out of the shadows Thursday to call for a complete pullout from Iraq within six months. “Our military has done everything that’s been asked of them. It is time to bring them home,” he said. Murtha’s hawkish record on military matters made his announcement all the more surprising. “It’s like George W. Bush saying he wants to raise taxes,” says Lawrence Korb, a defense analyst who served in the Reagan administration.

Democrats gave Murtha a standing ovation behind closed doors, but most kept their distance in public. “It’s a trap,” explained a Democratic strategist. “If the party comes out for a unilateral six-month withdrawal, that would become the issue for ’06, and they [Republicans] would kill us again.” 

Administration officials were less reticent. A White House statement said Murtha was “endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party.” Indeed, the election campaign tactics are back in all but name, with the president and the vice president attacking critics by questioning their patriotism. The strategy may rally some of the Republican base. However, the broader public has made up its mind about this administration’s credibility, and Murtha isn’t the only member of Congress paying attention.  

We learned in Vietnam that in a democracy you can’t sustain a war without public support, and time is running out for the Iraq war. Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to demand accountability on the progress of the war, a meaningless gesture in the sense it requires the administration to do nothing other than supply quarterly reports. But it signals the first cracks in the Republican coalition, and it emboldens Democrats to keep up their drumbeat assailing the credibility of the leaders who took us into a war we can’t win and don’t know how to end. 

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, for example, defends the right of critics to question and criticize their government and its policies. Hagel served in Vietnam, which he says was “a lie at the beginning.” He explained in an interview aired last weekend on C-Span how his views about Vietnam were altered when he learned how his government falsified information in order to win congressional approval for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority to prosecute the war unchecked. “And so we have now pretty much come to the same place,” he said, meaning our government committed us to military action based on bits and pieces of evidence that bolstered its case for war. Hagel did have qualms about the invasion, but he voted for the resolution that gave President Bush a blank check for war with Iraq. Now that we’re there, he says, “We cannot allow this to become a 1975 when we took the last remnants of our influence out on a helicopter on top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.”

There is a parallel with Vietnam in the falsehoods advanced by government to rally congressional support and public opinion for war. Take the ongoing controversy over exactly what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. Although analysts on the scene radioed back to Washington that there was no cause for alarm, President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara glossed over doubts about a second attack on American ships and trumpeted the alleged expansion of the war by the North Vietnamese to rally Congress and the American people to escalate a war that had been losing public support. Congress supported Johnson, with only two senators opposing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Years later, Sen. William Fulbright, who supported the resolution to give Johnson more force in Vietnam, called the move a mistake, saying he had been misled by McNamara.

Johnson and McNamara perpetrated an untruth for the larger good of increasing American firepower in the war, which they believed would deal a decisive blow to the enemy. Fifty-eight thousand American soldiers lost their lives in that senseless conflict. Does the fact that their political leaders thought they were acting in good faith at the time excuse the deception? President Bush and Vice President Cheney accuse Democrats of “rewriting history” by objecting to a war they voted for and claiming they were misled. But the information presented to lawmakers was selective, and efforts to learn more were stymied. Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkeley recalls being invited to a pre-war briefing at the White House with Bush and Cheney. When she expressed concern about Israel’s security in the event of a war, Cheney told her not to worry, that the administration knew where the missiles were that could reach Israel, and the U.S. military would go in and get them first thing. Using a pointer, he showed her the location on a map. Berkeley voted for the war in part because of false information.

Was this conscious deception? Should Bush and Cheney get a pass because they believed a show of strength in Iraq would serve U.S. interests? If Bush wants to retrieve his credibility, he should call off the attack dogs and make a televised speech to the American people conceding that the certainty he presented about weapons of mass destruction was not there, and that the administration relied on a single source, aptly named “Curveball,” who was later discredited. Bush can then present his case—what he saw, why he acted, and why he still believes he did the right thing. 

Bush won’t give that speech because he can’t tolerate ambiguity. It’s part of his personality. He gave up drinking cold turkey, and it’s all or nothing. He demands simplicity, and he equates dissent with disloyalty. The result is a White House that has become dysfunctional.

Correction: The original version of this column incorrectly stated that Sen. William Fulbright was one of two senators to oppose the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. In fact, Fulbright pushed the measure through Congress. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.