Oh Great. Well, it was only a matter of time before another member of the Tricky Dick cabal surfaced as a prime mover in the Mess O'Potamian machinations...

A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush's Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.
...
The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.

Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.
...
"The president can't be talking about troop reductions as a centerpiece," Kissinger said. "You may want to reduce troops," but troop reduction should not be the objective. "This is not where you put the emphasis."

To emphasize his point, he gave Gerson a copy of a memo he had written to President Richard M. Nixon, dated Sept. 10, 1969.

"Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded," he wrote.

Knowing that Henry the K has been an architect of this fucking mess has to give more than one staunch republican with a half a brain a pause in their day.

It seems that the Nixon crew wanted a do-over on Vietnam and found an empty suit with a bad attitude to accommodate their desires. I wonder how long it will be before the rational republicans finally come to their senses and take back their party? Short answer: not any time soon... how sad.