Others, however, saw the time for patience ending fast, saw the outlook as so grim that the United States would soon be faced with a critical choice: whether to drastically escalate the American presence in the war, thereby changing its very nature, or to move in the other direction, toward some form of negotiated withdrawal.2 Already in early March New York Times reporter David Halberstam wrote of this stark and looming choice, and in the succeeding weeks many others followed
