A first read on the Bush/Pelosi/Reid meeting today

Despite the media focus being elsewhere, Dem Congressional leaders did meet with Bush today regarding the war funding bill. I'm sure both sides will be leaking and spinning for tomorrow's papers, but Greg Sargeant has a little on it right now.

"Reid talked about a recent conversation he had with a retired general where they talked about the similarities between the current situation and Vietnam," the source relates. "He talked about how the President and Secretary of Defense [during Vietnam] knew that the war was lost but continued to press on at the cost of thousands of additional lives lost."

"The analogy to Vietnam appeared to touch a nerve with the President. He appeared a little sensitive to it," the source continued. "And he clearly didn't like to hear people in the room say that the war couldn't be won militarily."

From the AP version:

Several officials said the session was polite. But they said it turned pointed when Reid recounted a conversation with generals who likened Iraq to Vietnam and described it as a war in which the president refused to change course despite knowing victory was impossible. Bush bristled at the comparison, according to several officials..... One quoted him as saying, "I reject" the comparison.

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