"It has been said that the United States was deceived into entering and expanding the Vietnam War by its own overoptimistic propaganda. The record suggests, however, that the policy-makers stayed in Vietnam not so much because of overly optimistic hopes of winning ... as because of overly pessimistic assessments of the consequences of losing."

Source : Jonathan Schell (1987). “The real war: the classic reporting on the Vietnam War with a new essay”, Pantheon

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