Episode 39: The Johnson Treatment (Part 7) A Full Scale Land War in Asia

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This episode unfolds in two parts. 

In the mid 1990's, Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrote a book in which he describes what he called the mistakes his generation of leadership had made in Vietnam and his thoughts on how future generations could avoid them.  He admits they were wrong.  McNamara has often been criticized by historians, even in our series we used one interview with Michael Beschloss where he described McNamara's representations critically  from this very book. So I thought we should here from the man himself. This was his appearance, in 1996, with Ted Koppel on the  ABC News show " Nightline" 

Then we pick up where we left off with an escalating war in South East Asia and the protests it set off here at home. Here you can hear some of the hearings started by Senator William Fulbright, and the aggressive voicing of concerns from Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, and we can listen in as President Lyndon Johnson tries to control it all, to no avail, as the war grows to a half a million men in a full scale land war in Asia, and lays the ground work for a political explosion in 1968, a Presidential election year. 

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