After reading the latest dispatches from Iraq in the Sunday newspaper, I suddenly was overcome with deja vu. It took me back to Cu Chi, Vietnam, back to the 25th division at the end of the Ho Chi Minh trail near Cambodia. My reading had melded with my Vietnam experience.

Are the lessons of Vietnam coming back to haunt us with the insurgency in Iraq?

First of all, I realize the differences between the two conflicts: the nationalistic cause of Vietnam vs. the ethnic religious factions of Iraq, and obviously the topography contrast of desert rather than jungle. But similarities abound. The Vietnam War (like Iraq) had a murky incident that provided the impetus for President Lyndon Johnson to justify and escalate the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam.

That spark came when U.S. ships came under fire from the North Vietnamese, supposedly for a second time, in the Gulf of Tonkin. Whereas we were told by President Bush that the justification to occupy Iraq was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and his ties to al-Qaida. However, months later, the Senate's report on prewar intelligence determined these issues to be unfounded or tenuous at best.

The similarities continue once we enter these frays too. Although U.S. forces have overwhelming firepower, they are more equipped to fight conventional-style warfare (armies vs. armies). Initially, the United States overran Iraq in a matter of days. The opposition then switched to a hit-and-run guerrilla-style phantom army -- virtually the same as U.S. forces encountered in Vietnam. Even to the extent that the insurgents use the same armaments: AK-47s, Kalashnikov assault rifles, shoulder-fired RPGs (armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenades).

In effect, small group, mobile insurgents use ambush roadside bombs and suicide bombers (known as "sappers" in Vietnam) in random locations, then vanish. The Iraq insurgents' goal over a long period of time is to bring about a stalemate and psychologically wear down their opposition, as did their counterparts in Vietnam.

In his 1966 book "The Arrogance of Power," William Fulbright -- who as a U.S. senator at first supported the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, then later became an outspoken critic -- offers a perspective that may still be relevant in what's happening in Iraq, nearly 40 years later.

Mr. Fulbright presents a danger to America in her foreign relations: "America is now at that historical point at which a great nation is in danger of losing its perspective on what exactly is within the realm of its power and what is beyond it." Importantly he writes, "Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor; conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations -- to make them richer and happier and wiser to remake them, that is, in its own shining image."

He builds his case thusly: "What I do question is the ability of the United States, or France or any other Western nation to go into a small, alien, underdeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life."

As for the Vietnam War, the end result showed a reunification between the North and South. In the end, only time till tell if the occupation of Iraq will be successfully justified. Or will history, because it was read backward, repeat itself?