In the May 1996 Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute is "The Day It Became The Longest War" by Lieutenant General Charles G. Cooper, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired).
In November, 1965, the Joint Chiefs (Chairman, Army General Earle Wheeler; Army General Harold Johnson; Air Force General John McConnell; Navy Admiral David McDonald; Marine Corps General Wallace Greene, were allowed fifteen minutes standing in a small room of the White House to make their pitch.
They attempted to convince LBJ to bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong. They failed.
President Johnson turned his back on them for a minute or so, then suddenly, losing the calm, patient demeanor he had maintained throughout the meeting, he whirled to face them and exploded.
I almost dropped the map. He screamed obscenities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his office with their "military advice." Noting that it was he who was carrying the weight of the free world on his shoulders, he called them filthy names--sh__heads, dumbsh__s, pompous assh___s--and used "the F-word" as an adjective more freely than a Marine at boot camp. He then accused them of trying to pass the buck for World War III to him. It was unnerving. It was degrading.
. . .
But had General Wheeler and the others been given a fair hearing, and had their recommendations been given serious study, it is entirely possible that 55,000 or so of America's sons would not have been killed in a war that its major architect, Robert Strange McNamara, now considers to have been a tragic mistake.
In my view, had Goldwater been elected in 1964 (and I went door-to-door for him and saw America wanted a welfare state not an engine for freedom) Ho Chi Minh would be hanging next to Osama and Saddam as Satan asks if he should throw more water on the rocks.
May LBJ and McNamara be too hot to respond.