John McNaughton, his chief deputy on Vietnam in 1964 and like his boss a great quantifier, outlined the reasons for going into Vietnam and escalating, and assigned 70 percent not to save dominoes, but to avoid a humiliating American defeat; the second, and in McNamara’s eyes—though not Rusk’s—less important reason was to keep Vietnam and other adjacent territory from the Chinese, and to that McNaughton assigned 20 percent; and finally the official reason, the one for the high school history books, to aid the South Vietnamese so that they could have a better life was given 10 percent.
