This evening on "Hardball" MSNBC's David Shuster started off the hour with a dead on debunking of President Bush's rhetoric from his speech earlier today in which proclaimed that a U.S. pullout in Iraq would have the same consequences as our withdrawal from Viet Nam. The president says that America's departure sparked the Khmer Rouge's murderous rule, but as Shuster points out, the killings started well before the U.S. pulled out and that it was a mistake to go into Cambodia in the first place as we only made the violence worse. As for Bush's claim that pulling out of South East Asia emboldened America's enemies, Shuster had this to say:

Download Download

Shuster: "...But he wasn't talking about our enemies at the time, including communists and the Soviet Union during the cold war. Instead, President Bush spoke of Osama Bin Laden who mentioned Viet Nam a few years ago in declaring America would be weak in fighting al Qaeda. ...Bin Laden, however, is running al Qaeda from somewhere along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, not from inside Iraq.

John Amato: It's time MSNBC gives David his own show and have him guest host "Meet the Press." They can plug him in after Olbermann to capitalize on his ratings or have him replace the laughable--no ratings--Tucker Carlson. Tweety's show has problems too...