William Westmoreland

He came out of the mill village of Saxon, South Carolina, from a family in textiles and banking, and made Eagle Scout at 15. A year at The Citadel, then West Point, in a class that also held Creighton Abrams and Benjamin O. Davis Jr. He graduated First Captain, the highest rank a cadet can hold, and took the Pershing Sword for military proficiency. Artillery through Tunisia, Sicily, Normandy and the Bulge. Jump school in 1946, then the 504th Parachute Infantry, the 187th in Korea, brigadier general at 38, the 101st Airborne, and Superintendent of West Point from 1960 to 1963. Stanley Karnow's summary of what the army had produced: Westy was a corporation executive in uniform.

He landed in Saigon in January 1964 as deputy and had command of MACV by that summer. He asked for men and he got them — 16,000 American troops when he arrived, 535,000 by 1968. The strategy was attrition: find the enemy with search and destroy, kill him with artillery and airpower faster than Hanoi could replace him, and measure the whole thing in bodies. In November 1967 he told the National Press Club the end was beginning to come into view. On January 30, 1968, the Tet Offensive broke across South Vietnam while he was fixed on Khe Sanh. His forces won the battle and lost the argument at home. A request for 206,000 more men went to Washington and died there. He was made Army Chief of Staff instead.

Asked about the Vietnamese civilians killed by American firepower, he answered that it does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn't it. On camera for the documentary Hearts and Minds he said the Oriental does not put the same high price on life as does a Westerner, that life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. He turned back John Paul Vann and Lew Walt when they pressed him to shift toward pacification. In 1968 he had a contingency plan for moving nuclear weapons into Vietnam, codenamed Fracture Jaw, and dropped it once the White House learned of it. Days after he took over as Chief of Staff in July 1968, his wife's brother, Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Van Deusen, was shot down and killed in the Mekong Delta.

He lost a race for governor of South Carolina in 1974 and published A Soldier Reports. Then on January 23, 1982, CBS aired The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, which charged that he had deliberately understated enemy strength in 1967. He sued Mike Wallace and CBS for 120 million dollars. His own former intelligence chief, Major General Joseph McChristian, testified that Westmoreland had told him higher enemy numbers would be a political bombshell, and Colonel Gains Hawkins said the same. On February 18, 1985, days before the jury got the case, Westmoreland dropped it — no money, no retraction, no apology. He died on July 18, 2005, at 91, with Alzheimer's, and is buried at West Point.

William Westmoreland's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Search and destroy other
  The attrition strategy, measured in body count 1965
• Study on Military Professionalism other
  Commissioned after My Lai — it found the officer code badly eroded 1970
• A Soldier Reports book
  His account of the command 1976
• Westmoreland v. CBS case
  The 120 million dollar libel suit he filed and then abandoned 1982

• 1929 aged ~15 Becomes an Eagle Scout at 15
• 1936 aged ~22 Graduates West Point as First Captain Creighton Abrams, who would replace him in Vietnam, was a classmate.
• 1952 aged ~38 Made a brigadier general at 38
• January 27, 1964 aged 49 Arrives in South Vietnam as deputy commander of MACV He took full command that summer.
• 1965 aged ~51 Named Time's Man of the Year
• November 21, 1967 aged 53 Tells the National Press Club the end is beginning to come into view
• January 30, 1968 aged 53 The Tet Offensive opens across South Vietnam He had been watching Khe Sanh. Within months he was moved to Washington.
• January 23, 1982 aged 67 CBS airs The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception
• February 18, 1985 aged 70 Drops the libel suit days before the jury would have taken it No money changed hands. CBS issued no retraction.

• Lyndon B. Johnson 1908–1973
  36th President who signed the Civil Rights Act and launched the Great Society programs. served
• Lyndon B. Johnson 1908–1973
  36th President who signed the Civil Rights Act and launched the Great Society programs. served under
• Robert McNamara 1916–2009
  Secretary of Defense who applied systems analysis to the Pentagon and escalated the Vietnam War. served under
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. contradicted by