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This article focuses on three research papers on Vietnamese history that were presented at the 2004 meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. These three papers are contained in this issue of the journal "Pacific Historical Review." The first paper "Vietnam, the Bush Administration's War in Iraq, and the Search for a Usable Past," by T. Christopher Jespersen, provides a wide-ranging discussion of the relationship between history and political positioning. His essay looks at the different ways that Americans wishing to understand the global politics of terrorism and war in the twenty-first century have sought analogies from three Asian-Pacific wars. Other two papers, discussed here, are: "Hanoi and Americanization of the War in Vietnam: New Evidence From Vietnam," by Pierre Asselin and "Nation Building and the Vietnam War: A Historiography," by Christopher Fisher.