Echoes in Iraq: Lyndon Johnson, McGeorge Bundy and Walter Lippmann Discuss Vietnam

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Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, and the more that I think of it I don't know what in the hell, it looks like to me that we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we're committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.

Bundy: It is an awful mess.

Johnson: And we just got to think about it. I'm looking at this Sergeant of mine this morning and he's got 6 little old kids over there, and he's getting out my things, and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell am I ordering them out there for? What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? We've got a treaty but hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and they're not doing a thing about it.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003590634

[EVDebs]

1. Johnson didn't care as much when he said to JCS in Dec '63

"Just get me elected and you can have your war"-- see preface, Stanley Karnow's book Vietnam: A History, or, as John Newman points out along with Oliver Stone, that the JFK NSAMs 263 and 273 on Vietnam be overturned.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4086438&mesg_id=4114701

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Despite his crocodile tears, LBJ continued and expanded an unwinnable and immoral war.

All to prove that he was a tough "anti-communist".

[Enrique]

3. there's no way Bush is as engaged as LBJ was

no such converstations involving Bush will be unearthed.