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	February 6, 2008 More War or More Appeasement: The Path to War in Vietnam
	LBJ at Cam Ranh Bay, October 1966; Field Memorial, Chu Lai, November 1967 [vietnampix website] "Too hot, too hot" Napalm Attack, June 8, 1972, Nick Ut, Associated Press, winner of Pulitzer Prize. Kim Phuc is the naked child, see here
	World War II and Vietnam. Truman and Eisenhower and Vietnam Key Figures: Robert McNamara   McGeorge Bundy   Dean Rusk
	JFK and VIETNAM June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation January 8, 1963, McNamara Assessment of Situation in Vietnam. Including JFK, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen. February 2, 1963, Report by General Earle Wheeler, Army Chief of Staff. October 2, 1963 meeting, the Withdrawal Plan and Strategic Hamlets, selections from morning and evening meeting. JFK, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, John McCone, Maxwell Taylor, and Averell Harriman October 5, 1963 meeting, Withdrawal Plan Continued. JFK, Robert McNamara, and others. November 4, 1963. JFK Reflects on the South Vietnamese Coup and Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem. November 22, 1963, JFK Assassination. .
	LBJ and Vietnam Predicting the Quagmire. Early 1964. February 1, 1964. Testing Sargent Shriver: Vietnam and Assassinations February 25, 1964, More War or More Appeasement, LBJ and Robert McNamara March 2, 1964. "We're not going to send our troops in there are we?" LBJ and McGeorge Bundy March 2, 1964, the "deeply dangerous game." LBJ and Robert McNamara. March 21, 1964, Explaining Vietnam. LBJ and Robert McNamara. May 27, 1964, "It's just one of those places where you can't win." LBJ and Georgia Senator Richard Russell. May 27, 1964, "It just makes the chills run up my back." LBJ and Richard Russell.
	The Gulf of Tonkin Incident August 3, 1964, on Covert Operations, LBJ and Robert Anderson, former Treasury Secretary August 4, 1964, Responding to Attacks, LBJ and Robert McNamara. August 4, 1964, Confusing Military Reports, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp and General David Burchinal. August 4, 1964. "Generally a blank check." Robert McNamara to LBJ. August 6, 1964. "Our Friend Hubert is just destroying himself with his mouth." LBJ and New Dealer James Rowe. November 1964, Under Secretary of State George Ball: "Once on the tiger's back, we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount." December 1964, LBJ and the Newspaper Analogy.
	February-July 1965. Escalation Early February 1965, attack on Camp Holloway at Pleiku. LBJ to advisers: “We have kept our guns over the mantel and our shells in the cupboard for a long time now. I can’t ask our American soldiers out there to continue the fight with one hand tied behind their backs.” March 1965, Operation Rolling Thunder. March 7, 1965. Bloody Sunday, Selma, Alabama. Marines land in DaNang. New York Times. Chicago Tribune. Los Angeles Times.
	July 1965 Escalation. July 1965, Analogy of airplane with engine failure. July 7, 1965, LBJ Explains the Logic of Escalation to Martin Luther King, Jr.   July 1965, ~75,000 troops in Vietnam. End of 1965, ~185k military personnel; approx. 640 dead. End of 1966, ~385k military personnel; approx. 6,600 killed in action. August 1967, first time, majority of Americans polled, believed that intervention a mistake. 13k dead. McNamara and the Stennis Hearings. Air targets. 57. By 1968, LBJ to Bill Moyers, “I feel like a hitch-hiker caught in a hailstorm on a Texas highway. I can’t run. I can’t hide. And I can’t make it stop.”
	For more conversations on Vietnam, click here
	Materials for this course were developed by the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. Site design and Flash transcript+audio design by David Coleman. Flash transcript+audio files by David Coleman, Marc Selverstone, and the Presidential Recordings Program. Audio courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration and the Presidential Libraries of Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. For more resources on the White House tapes see www.whitehousetapes.org or click here or here.

 

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