Chapter 11, Under Seige in the White House Summary and Analysis

Conservative hawks damned Johnson for not destroying North Vietnam and bringing a quick end to the disaster. Liberal doves insisted he had put the US into the throes of a civil war, and that he should pull out immediately. Johnson continued to defend his strategy of "moderate" war because, to him, the conservative position would result in World War III and the liberal position would label the US as a cowardly nation. Troop strength had grown from eight hundred advisers in 1960 to a peak of almost five hundred thousand. Casualties went from twenty-five hundred in 1965 to one hundred thirty by 1968. The cost in dollars was more than the average American could fathom.

No longer able to deny the facts and lack of progress, Johnson sought to discredit his loudest...