If anything, the message signaled weakness by asking the Soviet Union to tolerate a bloody US war for the lame reason that so many US soldiers were already dead. This might sound absurd, yet perhaps in the rush of conversation the president had spoken more truthfully to Gromyko, his authoritarian adversary, than to the American people. We are continuing in Vietnam “for the simple reason that so many U.S. soldiers [have] been killed there.”
