Legislator Sees Echoes of Vietnam in Afghan War.

David R. Obey has served in Congress since Barack Obama was in grade school. He does not waste time with pleasantries, and he does not mince words. So when President Obama called Representative Obey recently to talk about Afghanistan, the congressman raised a topic sure to make the young commander in chief uncomfortable: Vietnam. ''I came here in '69, and I determined that I would give Nixon a year to see what he could do, because he had inherited the war, so I bit my tongue for a year,'' Mr. Obey said, recounting how he reminded the current president of the mistakes of that earlier war. ''I said the same thing with Obama.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]