http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2004/02/29/1077989419687.htmlFebruary 29, 2004 - 10:12AM
A former US national security adviser who served in the administration of the first president Bush, warned today that the war in Iraq threatens to grind on for years like the Vietnam conflict.
"It could become a Vietnam in a way that the Vietnam war never did," Brent Scowcroft said in an interview published in Portuguese weekly newspaper Expresso.
"Our exit from that country did not have grave consequences, while if we wanted to get out of Iraq today, the consequences would be very deep."
Scowcroft, who led a classified review of US intelligence in 2001 and heads the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board of the current President George W Bush, was an outspoken critic of the US-led invasion of Iraq, arguing it took the focus off the fight against the extremist al-Qaeda network.
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