Of cours LBJ was for this...

What proof do you have to this statement ?

That's *beep* Johnson was a calculating politician and was known to say crass and repulsive things, but he genuinely cared about ending racial discrimination; he had almost no front upside being a southern democrat to come out against segregation. US presidents were meddling in Vietnam since FDR and Truman helping the French try to stay in control. JFK was increasing the number of military advisors, had the s.v. president/puppet overthrown which got botched when they murdered him. Kennedy didn't want Vietnam to look like a failure, and he hid things from the public to be able to try and hold all the cards. I don't think that makes him good. Johnson was terrible with Vietnam for one: to try and take national security away from Goldwater and two: from what I've read, that LBJ may have had an uniformed idea of how strong JFK's foreign policy was because he only heard about the Cuban missle crisis situation through the rose colored glasses that Kennedy's inner circle created. Johnson didn't find out till it was too late that bombing and escalation wouldn't win; but he also failed to ever recognize that Vietnam was preventable in the first place. I think your point about Kennedy possibly pulling the plug on Vietnam in 65; I would read that with a grain of salt, it's just too convenient that that's what's come out mainly from JFK's former aides who idolized him and did everything to protect and heighten his image and manipulate the country with all the "Camelot" crap. I think JFK could have been a great president, but one: he was almost as coldly calculating as LBJ and two: no one will ever know what he would have done had he lived. Johnson I think would be regarded as one of the best presidents in history if only he had moved to settle the conflict in Vietnam in peace talks, but with the war on communism that was never going to be an option for him or any president of the time.