"We Were a Toothpick Factory!"

James Cash, a retired U.S.A.F one star general who flew F-4s in Vietnam has written: “I was stopped in my tracks by the decisons made by Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. I was young and naive, but even them I knew their daily interference was wrong and would not allow us to win this thing and go home. Decisions like not allowing us to strike the enemy aircraft while still on the ground, keeping real targets off the target list, and allowing us to strike only rusted-out buildings made us basically a toothpick factory. However, the big one for me came the day I saw President Johnson on televison, forcefully lying to the American people. I’ll never forget the language, ‘I want to assure the American people that the United States of America has never, and will never, bomb or use force inside the borders of Cambodia.’ On and on he disavowed the reports that this was happening. I was amazed. Guess where I had put several leads of 750 pound bombs every day for the past five days. You guessed it, Cambodia So much for Mr. Johnson. The only question in my mind was simply, ‘Was it just Johnson or was it the methodology of a particular political party?’”