William Westmoreland Quotes

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.

President Johnson did not want the Vietnam War to broaden. He wanted the North Vietnamese to leave their brothers in the South alone.

I was participating in my own lynching, but the problem was I didn't know what I was being lynched for.

Anytime it was advertised that I was going to be at a particular place, the radicals would be there, the cameras with TV news.

War is fear cloaked in courage.

In the end, we lost IndoChina to the communists. But we did not lose Southeast Asia.

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?

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

I haven't yet figured out how I was made first captain, because I was not an outstanding student. I was an adequate student.

It's the first war we've ever fought on the television screen and the first war that our country ever fought where the media had full reign.

I don't take criticism lying down.

Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there.

We moved in to help the Vietnamese defend their country and confront the Viet Cong.

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.

The Vietnam memorial is a masterpiece. The names of the dead are listed there, chronologically. Just the names.

As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion - and I worried about it.

When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.

We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning.

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.

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.

It became very clear that Hanoi was in effect strategically running the Viet Cong operation.

I don't think I have been loved by my troops, but I think I have been respected.

We had the best food any battlefield ever had.