No, not because of the valiant performance of Lt. Col. Hal Moore's 1st Battalion Seventh Cavalry at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley November of that year.
Because of the fifteen-minute meeting LBJ had in the White House that month with the Joint Chiefs.
The full account appears in the four-page article by Lieutenant General Charles G. Cooper, U.S. Marine Corp (Retired) in the May 1996 Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute "The Day It Became the Longest War".
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1965 (Army General Harold Johnson; Air Force General John McConnell; the Chairman, Army General Earle Wheeler; Navy Admiral David McDonald; Marine Corps General Wallace Greene) were allowed fifteen minutes in a small room of the White House to urge their course of action. No chairs were provided. They stood.
They stood and delivered their strongest recommendation for the massive bombing of Hanoi, mining of Haiphong, and LBJ replied:
"He screamed obscenities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his ofice 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."
The result of LBJ's target list "sanitization" is shown in the novel and film "Rolling Thunder"--and with the tens of thousands of names on The Wall.
Cronkite was aided in subverting American will by Hanoi Jane who in 1972 went to Hanoi to pose on the NVA AAA and deliver propaganda broadcasts on their radio--which they said gave them the strength to continue their fight. Hence the book, Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam by Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer at the link. Taping Hank Holzer's appearance cleaning Tom Hayden's clock on The O'Reilly Factor, the Holzers found themselves having dinner two tables down from Bill Clinton, who distinguished himself as the only president to journey to Hanoi to pose by a large bust of Ho. Bust and ho being terms irrevocably associated with traitor-rapist 42.
LBJ could have allowed his military leaders to win the war, but chose to waste American bravery and blood, while simultaneously squandering American wealth on a multi-trillion-dollar "war on poverty".
Dealing with the North Vietnamese who imprisoned and tortured 40,000 French (and, as the Holzers point out, the French cannot say to the nearest ten thousand how many of their young men they lost in that war), LBJ spared the North the full might of the American military.
And now Barbara Walters on The View allows Jane Fonda to say the "government lied to us" and she was only "trying to save American lives". In truth, she committed treason.
As did Taliban John.
And today we have a fifth column led by Tom Daschle--who incredibly wants to tar and feather Tom Ridge. While giving immunity to Saddam Hussein, Yassir Arafat, and the rest.
In truth, Vietnam was a battle against evil in a war which continues. The New York Times to the contrary notwithstanding.
Thank you for the infomation.