"a chilling 1964 phone conversation between President Lyndon B. Johnson and one of his top aides"

Bill Moyers, LBJ, Walter Lippmann -- and the Vietnam/Iraq Link
I figured Moyers would be interested in this transcript of a chilling 1964 phone conversation, since he was LBJ's press secretary -- and more sensitive than most to how nations go to, and stay in, losing wars. Sure enough, on his PBS show Friday night, Moyers offers a brief segment on the conversation.

By Greg Mitchell

(June 01, 2007) -- Earlier this week, I sent Bill Moyers a link to an article I had written about a chilling 1964 phone conversation between President Lyndon B. Johnson and one of his top aides, McGeorge Bundy. The subject of their conversation was the growing fear that the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war would be hard to halt, with the cost in lives staggering in years to come (a fear fully realized, and then some).

I figured Moyers would be interested in this transcript, since he was LBJ's press secretary, and more sensitive than most to how nations go to, and stay in, losing wars.

Sure enough, on his PBS show Friday night, Moyers offered a brief segment on the conversation (and mentioned E&P), augmenting his reflections with the actual tape recording of the conversation. It followed a vigorous but depressing interview with Bob Kerrey, the badly wounded Vietnam vet, who continues to defend a major U.S. presence in Iraq, indefinitely.

The Moyers segment on the LBJ chat is up online at You Tube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM2QTimBoeo

Here is my original article and the transcript. Moyers closed his segment by adding: "That was May 1964. Two hundred and sixty Americans had been killed in Vietnam by then. Eleven years and two presidents later, when U.S. forces pulled out, 58,209 Americans had died, and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese."

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