Unless Congress forces the Bush administration to start pulling troops out of Iraq, the legacy of the current U.S. military buildup might mirror that of a similar escalation in Vietnam ordered by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a retired three-star Army general said Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard and two other former military officers who oppose the troop buildup in Iraq stopped at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on a seven-state barnstorming tour. Their trip was sponsored by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, which has ties to a number of liberal organizations such as MoveOn.org.

The mission, they said, was to persuade the media to air their arguments in the hope of getting Congress' ear.

Gard noted that Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had told Johnson that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable and that Johnson had said privately he wanted to withdraw troops but was afraid of becoming the first U.S. president to lose a war.

So instead, in 1968 he ordered in 25,000 more service members. At that point, about 24,000 U.S. troops had been killed in action in Vietnam, less than half the ultimate toll of more than 58,000.

"Will the Congress have the political courage," Gard said. "Or will we look back five years from now after this surge with many more U.S. combat casualties and wonder why we did not take action to achieve a political solution?"

With Gard were Lawrence Korb, a former Navy Reserve captain, and Maj. Gen. (ret.) Mel Montano, former commander of the New Mexico National Guard.

Korb, who as an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan was then the Pentagon's "readiness czar," said the military is no longer ready.

Instead, he said, repeated deployments without time to rest and train, the injection of fresh troops who haven't been properly trained, and significantly lower standards for recruiting have put what was once the world's best Army in a "death spiral."

The 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, is so busy this year that all four of its combat brigades will be deployed, one to Afghanistan and the rest to Iraq, Korb said. One of the brigades is always supposed to be on call to respond within 17 hours to any emergency. Instead, The New York Times reported Tuesday, that duty will be passed to another division this summer.

By putting more troops in Iraq, the United States would actually undermine its security by continuing to anger Muslims everywhere, Korb said.

Guard troops and their families were badly stressed by the Pentagon's reliance on them for major parts of the force in Iraq, Montano said. His state has deployed all its units at least once, and one unit is serving a second tour, as part of the buildup.

"What really concerns me is that our greatest asset, our young people, are being handled like cannon fodder over there, and they should come back," he said.

Gard scoffed at the notion that talk of bringing the troops home undermines those who are fighting, citing a poll last year that said 72 percent of those serving in Iraq thought the United States should pull out within a year.

He also disagreed with the argument that if the United States pulls out of Iraq now, the more than 3,200 U.S. service members killed there would have died for nothing. They died doing their duty, Gard said.

"The only thing worse than soldiers dying in vain is more soldiers dying in vain," he said.

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