On my desk, opened at pages H2046-7, is the March 25, 1969 issue of the Congressional Record. On the 121 pages that follow are the names and hometowns of the 31,379 U.S. military personnel who died in Vietnam during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency. I requested publication of the names, because I wanted all Americans, especially my colleagues on Capitol Hill, to recognize the war's enormous human toll. It was part of my endeavor to bring U.S. troops home without delay.

At the time, I was unaware that several years earlier, Robert McNamara, Johnson's secretary of defense, privately concluded that the war could not be won. Despite that assessment, he did nothing to end U.S. participation in combat. To the contrary, he echoed Johnson's public assurances that a light was discernible "at the end of the tunnel" in Vietnam, although the defense secretary actually saw no light at all. McNamara did not disclose his early conviction that the war was unwinnable until he wrote his memoirs years after the war ended.

After Richard Nixon succeeded Johnson, the new president rejected calls for an immediate pullout of U.S. troops. Instead he announced Vietnamization, a policy of gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces as recruits from South Vietnam became available to fill the ranks. It was Nixon's way of getting troops home "with honor." But combat continued at a high level and so did casualties. When Nixon resigned as president six years later, caskets were still being shipped to America.

Both McNamara and Nixon deserve dark entries in history books for letting U.S. troops die in great numbers after the war was considered lost. By the time all U.S. forces left Vietnam, more than 16,000 additional names added to the 1969 roll of war dead. At the threshold of their careers, these young lives were snuffed out needlessly, a staggering loss to our society that could have been averted by wise and courageous leadership.

I mention this grim footnote to history, because President Bush declares he is intent on pursuing the U.S.-initiated war in Iraq that every realistic observer must now recognize as hopeless. He should know that the U.S. quest for the hearts and minds of Iraqis, already barely discernable, disappeared completely as soon as the pictures of U.S. barbaric prison torture came into focus. The photographs fueled new anti-American outrage worldwide. In Cairo, it sent Sahar Sobeih, a young professional who was already upset by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, into deep mourning. Prompted by the deeply-felt, sibling-like bond that the world's 1.2 billion Muslims feel for one another, she lamented: "These are my brothers and sisters."

Despite what they say in public, President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials must know that the war is now unwinnable. They must summon the wisdom and decency to order an immediate and total end to combat operations. The main mission of our forces from this day forward should be to avoid the death or injury of even one more person, whether American or Iraqi. The most honorable step our military forces can take is to depart completely once a popularly-elected Iraqi government is in place.

While a Member of Congress, Abraham Lincoln called war "the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions." For the sake of Iraq and America, this latest oppression must be lifted. The war in Iraq was wrongly conceived and poorly managed. It will enter history books as a massive folly.

The list of the fallen in Iraq was already too long when the first one died.

Paul Findley served as a Republican Member of Congress, 1961-83. Since then, he has lectured widely and written three books on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He resides in Jacksonville, Illinois. E-mail: pfindley@myhtn.net ]