Viet Cong dead after an attack on the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base.QUOTES.....
Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s
You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
Richard M. Nixon, speech, April 16, 1954.
If in order to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and particularly in Indo-China, if in order to avoid it we must take the risk by putting American boys in, I believe that the executive branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954
You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.
John F. Kennedy, speech, New York Times, October 13, 1960.
Should I become President...I will not risk American lives...by permitting any other nation to drag us into the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time through an unwise commitment that is unwise militarily, unnecessary to our security and unsupported by our allies.
John McCain rescued. 26 OCTOBER 1967 - HANOI, VIETNAM: John McCain is purportedly rescued from Truc Bach Lake by the Vietnamese after his plane was shot down
John F. Kennedy, 1961
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.
Barry M. Goldwater, Why Not Victory?, 1962.
Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? - was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture.
Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964
Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.
Lyndon B. Johnson, statement after Gulf of Tonkin incident, August 4, 1964.
We still seek no wider war.
Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964
We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
A US Special Forces soldier grimaces fiercely as he pulls a dead North Vietnamese soldier from a hole outside the Special Forces Outpost at Ben Het, June 21, 1969. The Americans broke out of the camp in an attempt to penetrate the surrounding enemy troops, killing eleven.
Ronald Reagan, 1964
We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.
We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.
Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964
This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.
Ronald Reagan, interview, Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965.
It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.
Ronald Reagan, 1965
We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
George McGovern, speech to U.S. Senate, April 25, 1967.
We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it....I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.
Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967
I see light at the end of the tunnel.
Unidentified U.S. Army major, on decision to bomb Bentre, Vietnam, February 7, 1968.
It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
Lyndon B. Johnson, address to nation, March 31, 1968.
Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved.
Stephen Vizinczey, 1968
The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture - aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.
April 4, 1967. An Army medic aids UPI Photographer Nguyen Thanh Tai after he was wounded by the explosion of a Viet Cong booby trap, 15 miles south of Saigon. Tai was one of six men injured by the blast, which was triggered by a trip-wireRichard M. Nixon, 1969
Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
Richard Nixon, Oct. 1969
I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.
Sen. Frank Church, May 1970
This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart.
Dalton Trumbo, Introduction, Johnny Got His Gun, 1970.
Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.
Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972
We believe that peace is at hand.
March 18, 1970. Ben Het, South Vietnam: A South Vietnamese member of the Special Forces Mercenary Unit stationed at Ben Het pauses for a touching moment with one of Ben het's children. Ben Het underwent a 50 some day siege.Frances Fitzgerald, 1972
By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels' wives.
Richard Nixon in a letter to President Thieu, Jan. 1973
You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.
Nguyen Van Thieu, April 1975
If the Americans do not want to support us anymore, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!
Gerald Ford, April 1975
Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.
A wounded marine shrieks in pain. November 12, 1966
Tay Ninh, South Vietnam: a G.I. from the 25th Infantry Division helps a captured Viet Cong through the barbed wire near Tay Ninh Air base. The prisoner was one of some 40 Viet Cong, who attempted to get into the air base to blow up helicopters early March 31st, 1970.
1969. US soldiers reportedly threw out a non cooperative war prisoner from a US Army copter in Vietnam. He supposedly refused to talk during the interrogation and then was simply thrown out.
May 25, 2009. Memorial Day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. A man places his hand against the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Memorial Day in Washington
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