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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (4223)	2/23/2004 11:53:15 AM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Harry Truman was the first American President to commit the United States to aiding Vietnam by sending military advisors there in 1950, while Vietnam was still under French colonial control. This reflected an American commitment to preventing Communist domination of Vietnam. President Eisenhower continued that commitment. But in 1954, with the French withdrawal from Vietnam, the formula changed. Vietnam was partitioned, with the North falling under the control of the Communists and the South under the control of Vietnamese nationalists and anti-Communists. By 1960, there were a total of 685 non-combat U.S. advisors in South Vietnam. President Kennedy was the third President to affirm our basic policy in Vietnam, but the first to expand it to a new, heightened level of commitment. He increased the number of U.S. military combat advisors in South Vietnam to 16,000. The Kennedy administration also committed a tragic blunder that forever changed the equation in Vietnam. On November 1, 1963, a coup encouraged and supported by the Kennedy administration led to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. By participating in the removal of South Vietnam's President, Kennedy had made the United States directly responsible for the fate of South Vietnam. What had been Vietnam's war became America's war. President Johnson escalated the American role to the level at which President Nixon found it. Following overwhelming Congressional approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which ratified his actions, Johnson began sustained bombing of North Vietnam, raised U.S. troop levels to 200,000 by the end of 1965, and 540,000 by the end of 1968. nixonlibrary.org