<P> The National Security Council recommended a three - stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam . On 7 February 1965 following an attack on a U.S. Army base in Pleiku, Operation Flaming Dart (initiated when Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was on a state visit to North Vietnam), Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light commenced . The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the Viet Cong by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure . As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese . Between March 1965 and November 1968, "Rolling Thunder" deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs . </P> <P> Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam . Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the Viet Cong and NVA infrastructure . These included the Ho Chi Minh trail supply route, which ran through Laos and Cambodia . The objective of stopping North Vietnam and the Viet Cong was never reached . As Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann noted, "This is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing . The best weapon...would be a knife...The worst is an airplane ." The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the communists that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age". </P> <P> After several attacks upon them, it was decided that U.S. Air Force bases needed more protection as the South Vietnamese military seemed incapable of providing security . On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam . This marked the beginning of the American ground war . U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment . </P> <P> In a statement similar to that made to the French almost two decades earlier, Ho Chi Minh warned that if the Americans "want to make war for twenty years then we shall make war for twenty years . If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to afternoon tea ." Some have argued that the policy of North Vietnam was not to topple other non-communist governments in South East Asia . </P>

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