Word: conge
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Seven-Part Plan. The new approach came from Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the austerely handsome ex-schoolteacher who represents the Communist Viet Cong at the long-deadlocked peace talks in Paris. By no coincidence, the plan was put on the table only a week after Le Due Tho-Hanoi's chief envoy to the talks-returned to Paris following a 14-month absence. As the key point in a seven-part plan, Madame Binh declared that if the U.S. agreed to withdraw all its forces from Viet Nam by the end of this year, the Communists would agree...
...Expert Paul M. Kattenburg recommended that the U.S. withdraw from Viet Nam completely. The suggestion was spurned by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara; in the months that followed, the Diem coup and the deteriorating ability of the South Vietnamese to thwart the Viet Cong insurgency carried America into a deepening involvement in Southeast Asia. Kattenburg, then head of the State Department's working group on Viet Nam, told the NSC that popular disaffection with the Diem regime, coupled with growing Viet Cong control of the countryside, presented the U.S. with an untenable position...
...AFTERMATH. In a secret report to President Johnson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Wheeler presented a more pessimistic assessment of the effects of the 1968 Tet offensive than officials in Washington and Saigon had made available to the public. While echoing official statements that the Viet Cong forces were defeated in their attempt to overrun South Viet Nam, Wheeler admitted: "In short, it was a very near thing. To a large extent, the V.C. now controls the countryside. His determination appears to be unshaken. His recovery is likely to be rapid; his supplies are adequate...
...will and the capability to continue." The bleak prognosis, coupled with a request for a 206,756-troop increase, came at a time when military and civilian leaders within the Johnson Administration were characterizing Tet as an allied victory that had left the Viet Cong crippled and ineffective...
McNamara agonized much more than he let on. The day after the Viet Cong raid on Pleiku, Hébert asked him why the U.S. could not even defend an airbase. "Because we don't have enough people," replied McNamara. "Why don't you get them?" demanded Hébert. "Because more men would be killed." "How many?" "Two hundred and fifty thousand," said McNamara with finality. It was a price that he was unwilling to pay. He wanted to have it both ways: victory and humanity. It was not an easy mix, and even...