Friday, Sept. 7, 2018 | 2 a.m.
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The Aug. 29 letter “A blunder from the beginning” was spot on.
Americans had been involved in Vietnam since 1950. President Harry Truman approved a National Security Council memorandum that proclaimed then-French Indochina a key area that would not be allowed to fall to the communists and for which the U.S. would provide support. He authorized $15 million in military aid to the French.
American military advisers began to accompany the flow of U.S. tanks, planes and supplies, and over the next four years, the U.S. spent $3 billion providing 80 percent of all war supplies. My father, Col. H.G. McNeese, was air attaché in Saigon from 1956-58.
The Gulf of Tonkin “incident” was an excuse to put boots on the ground based on a growing fear of communist aggression.
