Word: mcnamara
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...SOUTHEAST ASIA, the President resisted the temptation to veer off on a new tack in the ugly guerrilla war in South Viet Nam. Bolstered by the latest on-the-spot report from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Johnson decided to ignore both those who would neutralize the country and those who would carry the fight across the 17th parallel into North Viet Nam. Instead, he reaffirmed the slow, painful course that the U.S. has been following for some three years. "We must stay there and help them," he said, "and that is what we are going to do." Equally important...
...also the man who has been running our war in South Viet Nam, a war that we are going to win any day. Now! Fellow Americans! I give you the next Vice President of the United States! Mr. Competence himself! The Secretary of Defense! Robert Strange McNamara...
...politicking. One of McNamara's primary goals was a round of intensive briefings from Lodge, General Paul Harkins and other U.S. officials. With them he had ample opportunity to discuss all the alternatives open to the U.S. in the effort to salvage victory from the deadlocked little guerrilla war. He knew that back home there was a growing conviction among many Americans that 1) the Vietnamese alone probably could not win the war no matter how much money and weaponry they were given, 2) the U.S. should ship more troops to South Viet Nam, discard its "adviser" role...
Compromise Course. McNamara apparently opposes direct commitment of U.S. troops at present to combat the Viet Cong Communists. Back in Washington at week's end, he delivered a 1-hr. 15-min. verbal report to President Johnson, prepared a long written memorandum as well. Pentagon sources predicted that McNamara, while not discarding the possibility of some form of harassment against North Viet Nam, such as hit-and-run raids by Vietnamese guerrillas, was expected to urge that Washington simply step up its logistical support...
Such a compromise course might possibly stave off disaster while minimizing, for the Johnson Administration, the risk of a major war in an election year. But it all had a familiar ring, since McNamara had expressed many of the same hopes about the short-lived junta that preceded Khanh...