The White House is making it very clear today that it will not be rushed into any decision about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan – or how many they might send.

Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, is stressing the need for a “legitimate” Afghan government and a “credible partner” for the US to work with in Afghanistan. In other words: no announcements about troops until the mess that was the Afghan elections is sorted out – somehow

Here, Republicans are getting impatient and insist that the president must make up his mind soon. Otherwise it looks like America is being indecisive, and they say that emboldens America’s enemies like the Taliban.

Democrats who support the president’s right to take his time making up his mind counter that if George W Bush had spent a bit more time considering the right strategy in Iraq, then a lot of blood and treasure could have been spared.

And the longer the decision-making process goes on, the more comparisons are made with Vietnam – as they always are whenever US troops are sent anywhere. I can’t count the number of times I have heard Iraq being referred to as the new Vietnam. And now commentators are insisting that Afghanistan is even more like Vietnam that Iraq.

It’s not just because of what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan but also because of the way Lyndon Johnson’s attempts to pass progressive domestic legislation were made so much harder by the quagmire in Vietnam – and the parallels with the difficulties the Obama administration is having with healthcare reform now and will soon have with climate change legislation.

So as we watch this current president wrestling with the options for how to continue his war, it’s very interesting to read what key members of LBJ’s team now have to say about the agonised decisions that president had to make on Vietnam.

Shortly before he died, LBJ’s national security advisor McGeorge Bundy told interviewers that Johnson wasn’t really listening to any of the advice he was being given. He said Johnson “wants to be seen having careful discussion and he does indeed want to hear what everyone is saying”.

But apparently the president wanted to hear all the arguments so he knew what the opposition was thinking, not because he wanted to listen to them. Strategy meetings and conversations on the war were a façade, said Bundy. “The process was for show and not for choice.”

No wonder the White House keep insisting that President Obama is seriously listening to every option that’s being presented to him in the situation room. Even the views of Vice-President Joe Biden, who wants to reduce US troop numbers and whose ideas are usually dismissed as too kooky to be realistically considered

Here are few interesting pieces on the Vietnam/Afghan parallels that have appeared in US papers in the last couple of days -

- New York Times: From Defeat, Lessons in Victory
- New York Times: The Vietnam War We Ignore
- Washington Post: The Anguish Of Decision – Vietnam In Hindsight

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Iraq is a country I have visited many times since I was first there to report from the front line of the harrowing Iran/iraq war in 1980. Foreign intervention and interference has dogged it for more than a century. No wonder Baghdad is seized with parties and celebration.

For the promised American pull-out from Iraq starts today. US forces start pulling out of urban areas in the country on what the Iraqi government has declared to be National Sovereignty Day.

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The Prime Minister will announce an inquiry into the Iraq war this afternoon.

Given the nature of the military and intelligence material that’ll be under scrutiny Whitehall is expecting this to follow the precedent of the Franks Inquiry into the Falklands and be held in private. read more

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Gordon Brown will announce an inquiry into the Iraq war this week. My sources tell me that this will not be chaired by a judge, senior or retired. It will be chaired instead by a historian.

The hot tip in Whitehall is that it is likely to be the respected Churchill and Holocaust scholar Sir Martin Gilbert.

There are enormous risks to reputations – not least that of Tony Blair as he strives to become president of Europe (a real prospect). Securing that post for Mr Blair is said to be one of Lord Mandelson’s many responsibilities.

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In my youth in Stroke City (as Londonderry/Derry became known by those who resisted being drawn into the sectarian maelstrom), the local brigade of the Provisional IRA was wreaking havoc, killing policemen and soldiers, blowing up businesses.

I remember when no one talked of anything but the bombs. Visits to the walled city centre were never undertaken lightly. I remember my grandfather, a local businessman, ranting about what had become of his birthplace. read more

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The world is in an era of epic economics. So huge are the challenges, they will define domestic politics for years. Forget about the right answers, politicians are only just beginning to come up with the right questions.

And in this strange new world there often is no right answer. The international aspects of the crunch are becoming matters of diplomacy. The credit crisis is intertwined with a fitful dispersion of financial muscle to the world’s new industrial powers from what you might call the highly indebted rich countries. read more

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The images the President’s advisers hope will resonate most from his trip to Turkey are surely those from his tour of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque.

It was commissioned by an Ottoman Sultan, Ahmed 1st, who wanted to placate Allah almost 400 years ago. Now America’s President wants to do the same.

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During the war in Iraq, we were utterly reliant on a team of Iraqi drivers, translators and fixers.

They were optimistic that the Americans would bring freedom and hope – but over the years, as violence escalated, many ended up in crowded, dingy quarters in Syria and Jordan. They had no work, and no income. read more

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I shan’t be around for the next couple of days. I’m going off to be kidnapped, bundled up in a sack, immersed in thick mud, and shot at. I’ll also be updating my first aid skills.

Once every three years in this business you have to go off and be “refreshed” on the hostile environment course. The insurance companies won’t insure you in Iraq and places if you haven’t been on it.

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