Editing Robert McNamara (section)

====1965 fact-finding mission====
{{see|McNamara fallacy#1965 Da Nang visit}}
By June 1965, Westmoreland reported that South Vietnam was faced with a "collapse", which would require 280,000 troops to stop and reverse the momentum.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=422}} McNamara's advice in July 1965 to Johnson was to commit 180,000 more troops to South Vietnam in addition to a stepped up aerial offensive to destroy North Vietnam's economy was called by Bundy{{which|date=April 2025}} "rash to the point of folly".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=424}} Bundy stated that for Johnson to agree to McNamara's advice "was a slippery slope toward total U.S. responsibility and corresponding fecklessness on the Vietnamese side".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=424}} Bundy argued that it was the responsibility of the South Vietnamese government to stop the VC and that if the Americans continued to do all the fighting, then the United States would lack the necessary leverage to pressure Saigon into making reforms, turning "...the conflict into a white man's war, with the United States in the shoes of the French".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=424}} 

To resolve the debate, McNamara visited South Vietnam later in July on yet another "fact-finding mission" for Johnson and met the new South Vietnamese Premier, Air Marshal [[Nguyễn Cao Kỳ]], who had just overthrown Khánh.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=425}} Kỳ wore a flamboyant uniform which he had designed himself of a white jacket, black pants, red socks and black shoes which led McNamara to dub him as looking "like a saxophone player in a second-rate nightclub".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=425}} McNamara was not impressed with Kỳ, reporting to Johnson that he saw little evidence that he was capable of winning the war, and the United States would have to send more troops to South Vietnam.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=425}} Upon his return to the United States, McNamara told the press that the U.S. forces in Vietnam were inflicting "increasingly heavy losses" on the VC, but in private told Johnson that the situation was "worse than a year ago".{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=425}}