"I'm looking forward to my trip and to the APEC summit that Vietnam will be hosting," President Bush declared earlier today, prompting this volley from Last Call: "Bush is currently figuring out how his father can get him out of his '06 Vietnam trip." Which doesn't mean the trip's off completely if Poppy manages to pull some strings again; there's always Dick Cheney. Oh, wait. He says he's got "other priorities." Hey, what about John Bolton? "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy," Bolton once exclaimed. "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost." But these days his schedule seems pretty open, so who knows? Maybe he can go over there and do the job right this time. — GREG BEATO

Bush says he'll visit Vietnam next year [CNN]