"I'd rather use the nuclear bomb," Richard Nixon told national security adviser Henry Kissinger a few weeks before ordering a major escalation of the Vietnam War. "That, I think, would just be too much," Kissinger calmly replied. "The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?" Nixon asked. "I just want you to think big..."
("The only place where you and I disagree," Nixon later declared, "is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians and I don't give a damn." "I'm concerned about the civilians," Kissinger replied, "because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.")

[According to Anthony Summers' The Arrogance of Power, the Vietnam War might have ended seven years sooner had Nixon not scuppered the Paris peace talks by letting South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu know that he would cut him a better deal than would Lyndon B. Johnson.]

Bookmark/Search

Add/Forward