DiEugenio exposes Caro

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

It disgusts me to see the entity Colby trying to say NSAM 111 proved Kennedy was a war hawk on VietNam. Douglass more or less shows NSAM 111 was Kennedy's way of placating the right post-Bay Of Pigs and prior to the Missile Crisis. The only reason was to bide time for the planning of a Laos-like neutralization pact and negotiations. Colby is a liar who tries to pose a reluctant stop-gap measure as intent.

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Also, as Kaiser points out, the additional advisors was done in the face of NSC presumption in continuing the nuclear option that was left over from the "Eisenhower years" So, even with the above caveats, that is not enough because JFK upped the advisors as an move away from the ambiguously lingering permanent military intel bureaucracy policy of defending Vietnam with 5,000 advisors PLUS nukes.

The nuclear option was not merely a 1954 thing. JFK was trying to take it off the table for good.