[fallujah-nuker]

"By the time Nixon came into office, LBJ had squandered the political consensus on the Viet Nam War...all Nixon could do was organize an orderly retreat and attempt to train the South Vietnamese to take over."

Your memory fails you. If there was not a public consensus to win Nixon would not have been elected in 1968, he was the hawk on the issue. He was asked in an interview late in his life what his greatest mistake was as president, the interviewer hoping he would talk about Watergate. Instead, without hesitating, he stated that his greatest mistake was his failure to wage a massive air war against North Vietnam when he came to power, a Linebacker II offensive in early 1969 rather than late in 1972.

"For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'." John Greenleaf Whittier

[Bushbacker]

If there was not a public consensus to win Nixon would not have been elected in 1968,

____He barely won---and he won because people hoped he would get us OUT of Viet Nam...not escalate the war. If he had proposed an escalation of the bombing, he would have lost the election.