The War: A White House Vignette

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Ramrod-straight and resolute as ever, General William Westmoreland went to the White House last week to be wafted into his new job as Army Chief of Staff. Here is how TIME'S White House Correspondent Hugh Sidey viewed the ceremony:

If one closed one's memory in the East Room and listened to the strains of the Army band, then looked around at the array of generals, Cabinet officers and dazzlingly beautiful women hearing the words from Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor, one would assume that the U.S. had won the Viet Nam war.

It was a polished ritual. Speaking from the heart via the TelePrompTer, the President delivered an oration that might have been composed in honor of Wellington, post-Waterloo.

"Freedom was in jeopardy," said L.B.J., "and a struggling people had been brought almost to their knees by aggression—when William Westmoreland was called to urgent duty. His mission was to deny aggression its conquest. It was a mission simple enough to state. But to execute it, he had to fight the most complex war in American history. Now we are stirred by the hope of peace—a stable peace in which the people in Southeast Asia can live out their lives and develop their institutions as they will."

Then the President gave Westy the second oak leaf cluster for his Distinguished Service Medal—awarded after the Tet offensive. Resor declared that the U.S. effort in Viet Nam is on the "threshold of complete success." In response, Westy said his forces had "denied to the enemy a battlefield victory" and "arrested the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia." Then he saluted the Commander-in-Chief, and Lady Bird asked everybody into the Blue Room for coffee and cookies.