The Military Budget

Johnson had his finger on the pulse of what made him popular. He wanted his legacy to show a great man. But Vietnam undid him. When he was VP he visited over there and promised that we would never let them down. He compared the leader, whose name eludes me at the moment, to the great leaders of history. As President he wanted to ramp it up. He used the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to get congress to go all out. Before they had time to ramp it up it was known that the so-called incident never happened and they could have backed off. But Johnson was pumped. "Let's tack that coonskin to the wall," he is said to have gushed as they went to work. Campaigning for the 64 election, Barry Goldwater related that in a private conversation he told Johnson, "You know we are going to lose 40,000 men over there." Johnson replied "I know it but I have an election to win." He promised that "I would never send your sons to die in that foreign soil," very nearly his words. He ran ads of Barry Goldwater with atomic bombs going off.

But none of that suggests that he maneuvered to have the president assassinated. I don't buy it. He may have been rotten but he wasn't evil.

I already said I'm not trying to establish that he did it. I did express a personal opinion that he could have had a hand in it but we may never know since people from then are and have been dying off.

Well when you parse it that way, of course LBJ’s involvement seems ridiculous.
But what if we parsed it like “He had JFK killed because it was a quick way to the most powerful powerful position on earth; a position that both he and his wife strongly coveted”?

Greed and lust for power are not insignificant incentives for foul play.

In your opinion. But no one will ever know.

There was a book written about Johnson saying that, but I didn't read it. I just felt we would eventually get the full story. Now I'm not so sure.

The most believable conspiracy theory that I've come across is that it was a hit ordered by Sam Giancana, as outlined by Selwyn Raab in his book, The Five Familes. The Mafia had the motives and the methods and, until the wiretaps in the '80s, a pretty tight, loyal, and secure organization. But even Raab is careful to say that it is only speculative. Many people across the political spectrum hated LBJ – remember "MacBird"? – and were eager to soil his name and diminish his accomplishments.

I haven't let emotion determine what I think of LBJ. When he decided to halt the bombing and withdraw from the next campaign for the White House I almost felt sorry for him. I applauded his letting the next president have that window of opportunity to negotiate peace.

What fighting? We haven't been doing any recent fighting in Japan/Germany/South Korea/Afghanistan.

The Afghan people are still fighting. All we were doing was training them.

We went through this with Afghanistan.

Just because Mr. Trump has a terrible idea doesn't mean Mr. Biden has to follow through with it.