Nixon had notion to use nuclear bomb in Vietnam

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/02/28/nixon-tapes.htm

02/28/2002 - Updated 07:11 PM ET

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Thinking big, President Nixon raised the idea of using a nuclear bomb against North Vietnam in 1972, but Henry Kissinger quickly dismissed the notion.

"I'd rather use the nuclear bomb," Nixon told Kissinger, his national security adviser, a few weeks before he ordered a major escalation of the Vietnam War.

"That, I think, would just be too much," Kissinger replied softly in his baritone voice, in a conversation uncovered among 500 hours of Nixon tapes released Thursday.

Nixon responded matter-of-factly. "The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?" he asked. Then he closed the subject by telling Kissinger: "I just want you to think big."

He also said "I don't give a damn" about civilians killed by U.S. bombing.

[LLStarks]

1. Wow... An preemptive nuking? I thought that died with Truman. nt

[Sherman A1]

3. ?

huh?

[Posteritatis]

9. Pretty sure those two were some other kind of emptive. (nt)

[azurnoir]

2. I thought tht one was

Wm Westmoreland's "bright idea" thanks for the update

[harun]

4. "I just want you to think big", what a brilliant and well thought out military strategy.

:sarcasm:

[leveymg]

5. Nixon was a presidential psychopath. Proud GOP tradition.

Anyone who said what he did knowing the room was taped had to be nutz. Or, maybe he didn't know the Oval Office was bugged.

[Thothmes]

6. maybe so. But he was not the gent that got us into

a major land war in Vietnam. That honor goes to Lyndon Baines Johnson.

[spanone]

7. he was a sick man....and 'we' elected him to our highest position....go figure

[Canuckistanian]

8. That's surprising

Kissinger arguing against mass killings of innocent people?

[Gaedel]

10. a few weeks before he ordered a major escalation......

I was in Vietnam in 1972, and there was not much there to order "a major escalation" with. He might have begun bombing (as he did in Dec 72), but he had nothing to work with in the south. All of the allies had gone home except the Koreans, and they were planning a pullout. He had two US infantry battalions left on the ground, one up in Da Nang and one down around Saigon. The only combat assets left in country were four "aviation groups" with a grand total of about fifteen helicopter companies. The South Vietnamese Army was still recovering and rebuilding from the NVA Easter Offensive. If Nixon did open the possibility of a nuke strike, it was as an alternative to the B-52 "Christmas Bombing" of Hanoi.