kate Admin
Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 1891 Location: Upstate, New York
|
Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 5:32 am Post subject: Johnson talks of Vietnam War on newly released tapes |
|
|
LBJ calls the NY Times commies...deja vu
Dallas News
Quote: | Johnson talks of Vietnam War on newly released tapes
November 17 2006 | KELLEY SHANNON
As the Vietnam War worsened and Democrats suffered midterm election defeats, then-President Lyndon Johnson questioned advisers in 1966 about troop escalation and military supply shortages, according to taped telephone recordings released Friday.
Johnson, in one conversation with former President Dwight Eisenhower, said he was doing his best to win the war. "I'm trying to win it just as fast as I can in every way that I know how," he told Eisenhower, who offered his support. Johnson added, "I need all the help I can get."
Johnson railed against "commies" that he said ran the New York Times and against what he characterized as the newspaper's criticism of the war.
"The Times is run by a bunch of commies, and they want to get out of Vietnam and yield it to them, and I don't think I can quite do that," Johnson said.
McNamara said there were plenty of bombs — 265,000 tons of bombs either in Southeast Asia or on the way there.
"Frankly, we're going to just snow the place under with bombs," McNamara said. "And I'm doing it purposely to make them cry, 'Stop.'"
Eisenhower, who was president in the 1950s during the Korean War, told Johnson that any public comments he'd made about the war weren't designed to try to tell Johnson how to fight the current war. He said the Korean and Vietnam conflicts were different.
"Here is a war (Vietnam) that is the most nasty and unpredictable that we've ever been in, and it's just as much political as military," Eisenhower said.
|
more at the link _________________ .
one of..... We The People |
|