William Westmoreland in The Vietnam War
General William Westmoreland (1914–2005) was an American general who commanded U.S. military operations in Vietnam during the height of the war, from 1964 to 1968. He later served as the Chief of Staff of the Army.
Throughout much of his tenure as commander of U.S. military operations, General Westmoreland expressed optimism in his public statements about the war, reporting that American airpower and ground forces were successfully wearing down the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong.
By 1967, however, Westmoreland noted in private that there seemed no end in sight to the war. The massive Tet Offensive of 1968, a turning point in the war, undermined his public assessments of American progress.