Escaping Washington, But Not Escaping Iraq

Touring Vietnam, a chastened Bush finds parallels to the present hard to avoid

In one of the last strongholds of communism, George W. Bush worshiped in a wooden pew at a hybrid Catholic-evangelical service--"a moment," he later called it, "to converse with God in a church here in Hanoi." Earlier, his presidential motorcade had sped beneath a hammer and sickle formed from red and yellow lightbulbs, a reminder that the world does not change as fast as he would like. The reluctant traveler dropped into the capital of his least favorite analogy as part of a sweep through Southeast Asia that allowed him to look commanding, even regal, at a time when postelection Washington...

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