| OUTLOOK Gomulka Takes Reprisals
a inbor press: eapvide Against Professors Vol. 6, No. 13 April 5, 1968 Westmoreland Goes
by George Novack
Vietnam Solidarity Campaign Answers Tory Charges
POA Economic Downturn ve”, in West Germany Li
by Gerhard
y Gerhard Werner A VIETNAMESE REFUGEE
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1968
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A VIETNAMESE REFUGEE
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A VIETNAMESE REFUGEE
GENERAL WESTMORELAND GOES -- U.S. TROOPS STAY IN VIETNAM
By George Novack
By kicking General Westmoreland upstairs from head of the U.S. military command in Saigon to Army Chief of Staff, President Johnson has tacitly acknowledged the validity of what his critics have been saying since the success of the Tet offensive: American military strategy in Vietnam has run into a hopeless dead end.
It has been revealed that as recently as January 1 Westmoreland submitted a year-end report predicting that war gains in 1967 would be “increased manyfold in 1968." He assumed that the enemy forces had been compelled to withdraw to frontier sanctuaries and would be unable to mount major attacks from bases within South Vietnam. He did not anticipate or allow for the possibility of any invasion of the cities.
The U.S. military mastermind was outmaneuvered and caught with "his plans down" by General Giap and the NLF strategists. While American forces concentrated on. "search-and-destroy" missions in sparsely populated border areas and clung tenaciously to death traps like Khesanh, the NLF and North Vietnamese with collaboration from the population of South Vietnam assembled supplies, infiltrated their troops into the major cities, and . launched the stunning surprise of their~™ Tet offensive..Even the CIA privately admits that this was "a massive failure of intelligence."
It was far more than that. It-gave convincing proof that the Pentagon's: war policy is bankrupt. —
The extent of this failure was summarized in the March 18 issue of Newsweek. The bombing of North Vietnam, its