Everything you need to know about the Vietnam War

We won Tet.

No, really.

Doghouse Riley gives Victor Davis "300" Hanson a history lesson. I would put a quote in here, but it's all too good, too scathing, too important.

Ah, but there was passage penned by Hanson himself that I am drawn to like moth to flame:

Ultimately, public opinion follows the ups and downs—including the perception of the ups and downs—of the battlefield, since victory excites the most ardent pacifist and defeat silences the most zealous zealot

I wish.

They discuss how public opinion among Bush supporters is increasingly out of touch with empirical reality, and cite to a public opinion scholar who argues that "this echoes Leon Festinger's research on the psychology of 'cognitive dissonance' in millenarian sects that believed more strongly in the impending end of the world after their prophecies had failed." [Italics mine.] [The authors] suggest that it is likely on the balance of the evidence that elite driven ideology is leading Republicans to become "so ideological in their view of foreign affairs that they are impervious to information."