Such Pollyannaish views appeared impossible to reconcile with the capabilities the Vietcong had displayed in the Tet Offensive. “What the hell is going on?” Walter Cronkite of CBS News exclaimed. “I thought we were winning the war.”19 In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, Cronkite journeyed to Vietnam and produced a bleak half-hour special report that aired on CBS on February 27, 1968. “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate,” he proclaimed with his typical gravity. Imperturbable, bland, and authoritative, Cronkite was, according to
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