William Westmoreland Quotes
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I don't take criticism lying down.
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I haven't yet figured out how I was made first captain, because I was not an outstanding student. I was an adequate student.
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I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.
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We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.
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It became very clear that Hanoi was in effect strategically running the Viet Cong operation.
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I was participating in my own lynching, but the problem was I didn't know what I was being lynched for.
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The last man in the world who should have been criticized was the American soldier. They should have criticized me.
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I have no apologies, no regrets. I gave my very best efforts.... I've been hung in effigy. I've been spat upon. You just have to let those things bounce off .
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The military lead turbulent lives, but they are people like everybody else.
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The Vietnam memorial is a masterpiece. The names of the dead are listed there, chronologically. Just the names.
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The politicians in Washington just had no idea about the complexity of the situation in South Vietnam.
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As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion - and I worried about it.
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They're asking women to do impossible things. I don't believe women can carry a pack, live in a foxhole, or go a week without a bath.
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This was a type of war that we'd had no experience with before. Some of our policies were kind of trial and error in character.
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War is fear cloaked in courage.
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Anytime it was advertised that I was going to be at a particular place, the radicals would be there, the cameras with TV news.
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When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.
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I see battlefields that are under 24-hour real or near-real time surveillance of all types. I see battlefields on which we can destroy anything we can locate through instant communications and almost instantaneous application of highly lethal firepower.
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The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.
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I've made this statement many times: If I would have to do it over again, I would have made known the forthcoming Tet Offensive.
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I don't think I have been loved by my troops, but I think I have been respected.
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By the end of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?
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In the end, we lost IndoChina to the communists. But we did not lose Southeast Asia.
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President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.
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Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
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Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there.
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We'll blast them back into the stone ages!
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My wife was my greatest asset. I didn't marry her until after World War II, but she has complemented me in every job I've ever had
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Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.
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When I took command in Vietnam, I gave great emphasis to food and medical care - and to the mail
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William Westmoreland
- Born: March 26, 1914
- Died: July 18, 2005
- Occupation: Military Commander