During my cadet years, West Point was still a military cloister, linked tenuously to the outside world by the West Shore Railway, the excursion boats… - Maxwell D. Taylor

To Diddy, The Best Taylor Soldier

Elements of the information media contributed to prolonging the war by their manner of reporting the news. It required only selective reporting, not deliberate fabrication, to create the impression that we Americans were the prime aggressors bent on expanding the war to avoid impending defeat, and that our alleged successes were really defeats which officials were trying to hide from the American public. Biased reporters found no good to say about our Vietnamese allies, whom they held up to scorn in a way which led the American people to believe that our allies were not worth the sacrifices we were making in their behalf. Such selective and slanted reporting spread defeatism among the tender-minded at home and provided enormous encouragement for Hanoi to hold fast and concede nothing.

As we learned on the American frontier, it is impossible to plant corn outside the stockade until the Indians are driven away.