Bear Taylor 
“…HE APPEARS TENSE AND AWARE OF U.S. FRUSTRATIONS”…
RIPPLE SALVO… #715… LBJ (16-Feb-68): “We will have a bad summer. We will have several bad summers before the deficiencies of centuries are erased. All we can do is the best we can do with the resources we have.”… but first…
Good Morning: Day SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTEEN of a history lesson called Operation Rolling Thunder…
18 FEBRUARY 1968… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a beautiful Sunday in Central Park…
TET OFFENSIVE/KHESANH: Page 1: FOES SHELLS HIT 37 VIETNAM CITIES–SAIGON FIELD, U.S. HEADQUARTERS IS AMONG TARGETS AT TANSONNHUT–BARRAGES DESTROY PLANES–BLASTS SHAKE CAPITAL–Ground Assaults Reported But They Are Less Intense Than In Recent Days”... “Enemy mortar and rocket crews lashed out at 37 cities, including Saigon, this morning in a concerted bombardment. Shells struck the central part of the capital, within two blocks of the United States Embassy, wounded 39 United States servicemen at Tansonnhut Airfield on the city’s out skirts, and fell on the headquarters of the national police. But neither the shelling that preceded the recent Lunar New Year offensive, the bombardment was not accompanied by heavy ground attacks. Thus it fell short of constituting the ‘second wave’ that had been feared by many Americans and South Vietnamese….armed helicopters responded quickly making it difficult for the mortar crews to adjust their aim. Although three United States and one South Vietnamese aircraft were destroyed at Tansonnhut, most of the rounds fell harmlessly on barren land… Seventy rounds exploded at Phubai airfield, seven miles from Hue, and 23 struck the headquarters of the 25th Infantry Division at Cuchi, 25 miles northwest of Saigon, wounding 30 soldiers. Twenty-five more rounds thundered at the Bien Hoa airfield about 18 miles north of Saigon… Damage at the 37 cities hit in the attack was described as light.… IN ACTION IN THE NORTH United States planes continued to press their search for three enemy tanks sighted Friday near Conthien on the south side of the demilitarized zone…(the commitment of air strike and close air support sorties to the northern border area and Khesanh was put at over 300 per day)… Page 1: “ASSAULT IN HUE HAMPERED AS FOE SINKS SUPPLY SHIP”... “Enemy forces dealt a sharp blow to allied supply lines in Hue today with mortar and rocket barrage that sank a naval landing craft and disabled five others. Smoke and flames billowed over the Huong River as the naval craft went down with a cargo at 10,000 gallons of gasoline….U.S. Marines and Navy forces fought back with shells igniting clusters of building near the Citadel. It was one of the hardest clashes yet in the 18-day battle for Hue. And the Marines who only yesterday were predicting that they would control the Citadel walls in 36 to 48 hours, added another day to their estimate…
Page 1: “President Visits Men Going To War–Flies To Carolina Base And Later To California To See Combat Reinforcements at El Toro”… (see Ripple Salvo below)… Page 2: “DRAFT CALLS OF 40,000 A MONTH THROUGH JUNE”… Page 1: Johnson Rating Declines In Poll–Gallup Notes 7-Point Drop Since Vietcong Offensive After a Three Month Rise” (41% down to 34%)… Page 3: “3 FREED POW AIRMEN ARE BACK IN UNITED STATES–In Washington One Reports Hanoi May Release Others” (Picture of Major Norris Overly and Captain Jon Davis Black being welcomed by LGEN Benjamin O. Davis and RADM Fillmore Gilkeson)… Page 7: “400 Enroll In Harvard Course on ‘Law and the Lawyer In the Vietnam War’–Professor Allan Dershowitz”… Page 3:”Hanoi Derides U.S. For Sucking More Troops”… Page 5: “Scientists Study Defoliated Areas–Report Concludes Rocklike Laterite Could Result”… Page 8: “Gore Urges Quit War Morass–Calls For Negotiations For a Neutralized Vietnam”…
Page 1: RIOT STUDY IS SAID TO EXPRESS ALARM–REPORT OF PRESIDENTIAL PANEL IS SCHEDULED MARCH 3″… “In a small, first floor room of the Capitol beneath the Senate chamber ten men and a woman have been putting the finishing touches on a document that will tell the American people they are in deep trouble. The National Commission on Civil Disorders appointed by President Johnson last July to find the cause of urban riots and to recommend solutions, is set to publish its report March 3.” Humble Host suggests a reading of the summary is at:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/documents/1363817-report-of-the-national-advisory-commission-on
Then ask yourself: What’s changed in the FIFTY YEARS since 1968? …
18 February 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times…Coverage limited to air support for Khesanh… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were eight fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 18 February 1968…
(1-4) On the night of 17/18 February the Viet Cong targeted the flight lines of Bien Hoa and Tan Son Nhut and scored hits on several aircraft: one F-100F at Bien Hoa was destroyed and three damaged; and three aircraft were destroyed at TSN– one C-130B, an RF-4C and an RF-101C…
(5) MAJOR M.S. MUSKAT and CAPTAIN K. STOUDER were flying an F-105F of the 44th TFS and 388th TFW out of Korat on a Barrel Roll mission in Northern Laos. While strafing an enemy storage area 10 miles west of Sam Neua they were hit by ground fire. They were able to fly the aircraft to within a few miles of Udorn before having to eject. They were rescued to fly and fight again…
(6-7) Two RF-4Cs were destroyed by Vietcong rockets and mortar rounds in the course of four separate attacks on Tan Son Nhut during the day of 18 February. Sixty five rounds of enemy mortar and rocket fire hit the big airbase.
(8) A C-47B of the 377th CSG crashed on take-off from Pan Son Nhut as a result of pilot error. All three crew members survived. At least to to fly again.
RIPPLE SALVO… #715… WHAT’S ON THE PRESIDENT’S MIND? On Saturday 17 February New York Times writer Max Frankel was at the President’s elbow as LBJ made stops to talk to the troops in North Carolina and California. He spent the night in a bunk on USS Constellation off San Diego. Humble Host brings to RTR a handful of quotes from the 30-column inches of copy in two articles Frankel posted in the NYT on 18 February 1968… Frankel summarized the President’s message to the troops this way: “The President’s message was firm and fateful; the search for peace has failed and the national interest and safety now depends on difficult fighting by young Americans in arms.”…
Frankel: “In offering prayers and good wishes to elements of the 82nd Airborne Infantry Division in North Carolina and elements of the 27th Regimental Landing Team, Fifth Marine Division, as they strapped themselves into transports for direct flights to Vietnam, Mr. Johnson spoke candidly of the difficulties ahead. This is how he put it to the marines here in California (El Toro):
LBJ in El Toro: “This is a decisive time in Vietnam. The eyes of the nation and the eyes of the entire world–the eyes of history–are on that brave band of defenders who hold the pass to Khesanh and the area around it. We do not doubt the outcome. The enemy’s tide will be broken. The villages –and the treasured city of Hue–will be rebuilt. Freedom will survive, because brave men like you are going out there to preserve it.”
LBJ in North Carolina: “For your nation, for all of its people, those duties may become more demanding, the trials may become more difficult, the tests more challenging, before we or the world shall know again that peace on this planet is once more secure.”… Frankel writes: “The enemy’s answer to diplomatic probes in recent months has been pillage, the president said. He said the enemy has decided to try to win ‘now–this year–‘ by shaking the Government of South Vietnam ‘to its foundations,’ shaking the confidence of its people and destroying the will of the American people ‘to see this struggle through.’ He is striking ‘at this hour,’ the President said in a reference to the new attacks on cities and American bases throughout Vietnam. ‘Our forces are ready,’ Mr. Johnson asserted. ‘I know they will account themselves as they always have.’
UNSWERVING RESOLUTION… LBJ: “Our answer–your answer–must be just as clear,’ the Commander-in-Chief told his troops. “Unswerving resolution to resist ruthless attacks, as we have resisted every other. Now remember this: you, each of you, represent America’s will–America’s commitment–in a land where our own security as well as South Vietnam’s freedom is now facing a deadly challenge. Men who have never been elected to anything are threatening an elected Government and the painfully achieved institutions of democracy.”… Then the President strode through the aircraft to shake 94 hands of young men in combat fatigues as they headed out to reinforce 500,000 other Americans in the battle zone. “I pray all of you will be back.”…Then he said to the crew of the aircraft: “Take care of these boys. ” As the President exited the aircraft the 94 paratroopers shouted: “All the way, sir,” the slogan of their oft decorated division.”
The President spent another half-hour at Womack Army Hospital at Fort Bragg visiting the wounded who have returned from Vietnam. No speech, just questions: how they felt, where they served and how they were being treated and wishing them well…
The Commander-in-Chief was accompanied by, among others, Lieutenant General Lewis Walt, Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps and Walt Rostow, the President’s National Security Advisor.
Max Frankel’s second 18-Feb-68 article covering several sessions over a week with LBJ. Head Line: “A WEARY PRESIDENT: He Appears Tense and Aware of U.S. Frustrations”…
“President Johnson is a weary and defensive man these days. He looks tired. He speaks slowly. He insists that he is doing the best he can and says that this is a lot. But he talks as if he feels compelled to prove it. Mr. Johnson’s pride in programs that he has enacted keeps bumping into an awareness that the nation cannot mow do ‘what we ought to do.’ His sense of the nation’s frustration over Vietnam keeps coming up against his belief that he has consulted the wisest men he knows and cannot figure out what else to do. This is, he told a group of elderly persons enlisted in the public service today (15 Feb), ‘a day of trouble and trial for our country.’ His ordeal he said at a ceremony Monday (12th) is comparable with Abraham Lincoln’s in the Civil War. His trouble, he told a group of college students that night, is that everyone expects the Government to work miracles to guarantee the good and meaningful life.
BAD SUMMER FEARED…
” ‘We will have a bad summer,’ he conceded to a Negro questioner among the students. ‘We will have several bad summers before the deficiencies of centuries are erased. All we can do is what best we can do with the resources we have. I don’t know how to do anything better than we are doing it. If I did I would do it. I would take the better way. we have considered everything. A man’s judgment is no better than his information.” The President, Mr. Frankel wrote, talked a lot about a ‘credibility gap, and ‘we have one because there are instances we don’t understand the implications of all we say, and sometimes the people who hear it don’t understand it. There is also a ‘communication gap, not between the people but also among well-to-do people and the poor people who know nothing of each other’s worlds.”
“The tensions implied by these comments are clearly visible to those who see the President from day-to-day. He goes through the customary schedule of ceremonies and swearing-in calmly and composed with a polite hand shake for visitors and a wink or smile of recognition for the familiar. But his face is drawn and in a few revealing moments his message is perplexed. To the students Monday and to the older folks today, the essence of Mr. Johnson’s self-defense was that he knew that social progress would be slow and that all that had been done represented only ‘a few steps up a long road.’
“But he suggests hurt by the accusations of neglect, and he has in his head the statistics of massive Federal spending for the people’s welfare’…. In 1960, he points out, Federal spending for health, education and security totaled $19-billion. In 1964 it was $23 billion. This year it will be $47-billion… The President has been pouring forth his statistics this week, after covering the same ground twice and three times, never quite saying what he means: That despite Vietnam, his Administration senses the nation’s social needs, and has moved far to meet them.
“On Vietnam, he insists that he has gone as far as honor permits to make peace, only to be met by Communists treachery. The result, Mr. Johnson says, is that, ‘nearly every option open to us is worse than what we are doing.’
“Are these the arguments of a man preparing to run for reelection? Mr. Johnson is not saying…. Most of Washington expects him to run.’… The President said: ‘ Through the ballot people can gain the rewards they think they are entitled to. They can bring reforms that are essential. They can turn into motion the revolutions inside all of us and they can bring them to reality, constitutionally, and appropriately and as we human being should. We don’t have to act like animals to get the revolutions and reforms translated into action. That comes with the ballot.’ “…
RTR Quote for 18 February: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: First Inaugural, 1861: “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or over throw it.”
Lest we forget… Bear
