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According to Clifford, why couldn't the United States
win the war in Vietnam?
We didn't operate well in Vietnam. We weren't prepared
for what we found there. We had no expertise in jungle
warfare. ... We had a ten-or fifteen-to-one firepower
advantage.... But it was the first time we had ever
fought that kind of war, and it wasn't what we thought it
was going to be at all.
Once we conducted a great sweep .... Fifty thousand
picked troops, wonderfully prepared and all. It was
looked upon as possibly the seminal event of the war -it
would break the back of the opposition. It took ten or
fifteen days to move through there, and I'm not sure we
killed even two hundred of the enemy. They just weren't
there.
-Clark Clifford
North Vietnam was fighting a war of attrition.
The Viet Cong had more weapons and firepower.
The US military was not large enough for a war of
this size.
O US troops were ill-prepared to fight in Vietnam's
environment.
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