Bush gets Iraq lesson from Vietnam

Apec opens

In his first day in the capital of a country that was America's wartime enemy during his youth, President Bush said today that the American experience in Vietnam contained lessons for the war in Iraq. Chief among them, he said, was that "we succeed unless we quit".

"We tend to want there to be instant success in the world," Mr. Bush said after a lunch with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, "and the task in Iraq is going to take a while."