The McNamara-Taylor report was a remarkable document, both for its importance in subsequent American policy decisions and for what William P. Bundy, an assistant secretary of defense, who was a member of the delegation, later called its “ internal inconsistency.” Though the military section of the report was optimistic, predicting victory once the political situation righted itself, the political section maintained, in Bundy’s words, that “such a righting was unlikely, and that on the contrary there was a serious prospect that an unreformed Diem would bring on chaos or an unpredictable change
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