Kennedy certainly had people there training S. Vietnamese soldiers, and maybe more than that.There’s been talk that Kennedy was thinking about getting out, but the Cold War was at a high point. Would he have? I don’t know.

The big surge came after the Tonkin Gulf fakery, as I’m sure you know, but we were taking over from France (who wisely got out) long before.

Funny that Ho Chi Minh was our ally against the Japanese, but he somehow didn’t deserve to run the country. Our intervention made everything SO much worse.