American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

By the beginning of 1968 the United States had been involved in military operations in Vietnam for over seven years and in major ground combat for two-and-a-half years. In-country U.S. military strength had risen to 485,000, and General William C. West- moreland had been using his troops aggressively in all parts of South Vietnam to pursue the enemy's main forces and to help shield the popu- lation from enemy attack. U.S. and allied forces had conducted hun- dreds of operations both large and small, and some forty of that number had each achieved a verified body count of 500 or more enemy soldiers. According to MACV estimates, 81,000 Communist soldiers had been killed in 1967, giving substance to Westmoreland's belief that the allies were slowing winning the war in Vietnam.

Other trends seemed to confirm his optimism. While the Ameri- can public appeared to be growing weary of recitations of statistics, the Johnson administration continued to put faith in them as one way to make sense of a war that was so difficult to measure. The pacification trends were especially heartening. By 1967 some two-thirds of the ham- lets in South Vietnam were judged secure and under the control of the central government. (In early 1965 the government was being chased from the countryside and on the verge of collapse.)