From a message placed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial: "You gave your body parts -- even your lives. We were taught to respect those in power. Those same officials lied to you and many others."

From a mother about her veteran son, a survivor: "I am 85 and don't know how much longer I will see him suffering with his pains and nightmares."

I too am having nightmares. Mine can be traced to the ringside seat I had at the crafting of U.S. policy on Vietnam and to a feeling of déjà vu that I cannot shake as I watch U.S. policy toward Iraq unfold.

My most frustrating professional experience came in the '60s when I served as principal CIA analyst of Soviet policy toward Vietnam and China. As U.S. forces sank deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam, senior officials in Washington began to indulge a wishful thought that the Soviets could be pressured or cajoled into "using their influence" to help the United States find a graceful way out -- and that, until then, we must "stay the course."

After pouring over the evidence, my colleagues and I concluded that the Soviet Union, in fact, had precious little influence with the Vietnamese Communists, partly because it had sold them down the river at the Geneva Conference in 1954. That unwelcome conclusion was summarily rejected by U.S. policymakers. The mischievous chimera that Moscow would agree to "influence" the Vietnamese Communists proved resistant to all evidence to the contrary.

Recently declassified documents show that in the fall of 1969 President Richard Nixon put U.S. forces on worldwide nuclear alert, in what he (aptly) called a "madman" strategy aimed at scaring the Soviets into "using their influence" to force Vietnamese Communist concessions at the negotiations in Paris.

Last month the Bush administration took a leaf out of Nixon's book when it threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iraq if the Iraqis use chemical or biological weapons against U.S. troops. All U.S. intelligence agencies agree that Saddam Hussein probably will, in fact, use chemical and/or biological weapons if we invade Iraq -- which is what President Bush seems determined to do. Is this new "madman" strategy not the stuff of nightmares?

The U.S. slide into Vietnam was initially a creature of ignorance laced with hubris, but deliberate deception quickly began to play a central role. In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson used spurious reports of a North Vietnamese patrol boat attack on a U.S. warship in the Tonkin Gulf to muscle Congress into giving him carte blanche to make war. Does this not have an eerie contemporary ring?

Years later, Johnson's national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, gave a chilling first-hand account of how Johnson abruptly waved aside Bundy's cautions about the Tonkin Gulf incident and dispatched him like a pageboy to do his bidding on Capitol Hill. All the president's men went along with the deception.

Three years after the Tonkin Gulf resolution, the U.S. commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland, falsified Vietnamese Communist troop strength in order to project an image of progress in the war (he knew there were twice as many as he was counting). Had he told the truth, the war could have been stopped before the disastrous Vietnamese Communist Tet offensive in early 1968.

And the Vietnam Memorial would be less than half the size it is today, since there would be 30,000 fewer names to accommodate.

Regarding Iraq, there is a déjà vu/flashback quality to the dissembling of top Bush administration leaders as they contend that:

• Iraq poses a more immediate danger to the United States than North Korea does.
  
• The Iraqis can produce a nuclear weapon "in less than a year."
  
• The United States has persuasive evidence that Iraq had a hand in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
  
• The U.S. threat to use nuclear weapons will deter Iraq from using chemical/biological weapons. (That worked in 1991, but only because the president's father had the good sense to halt the troops on the road to Baghdad, sparing Saddam.)
  
• U.S. troops have adequate protection to fight in a chemical/biological warfare environment. (Not so, says Congress' General Accounting Office.)
  
• Oil plays no role in U.S. policy decisions.

Sadly, this by no means exhausts the list of disingenuous allegations that have left most Americans frightened, but also anesthetized and resigned to an unnecessary war that could include nuclear weapons. Palliatives include Pentagon suggestions that leaflets will persuade Iraqi soldiers not to fight, and that Iraqi generals will remove Saddam as soon as the first U.S. soldier sets foot in Iraq.

Would you risk the life of your own son or daughter to test that kind of wishful thinking?

Secretary of State Colin Powell, the only top administration leader with experience in combat, needs to lead President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz down to the Vietnam Memorial to read the handwriting on the wall.

Ray McGovern served as an Army infantry and intelligence officer from 1962-64 and then as a CIA analyst until 1990. He is now co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington, D.C. Write him at rmcgovern@slschool.org.

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