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“The training missions that we have in Vietnam have been instructed if they are fired upon to fire back to protect themselves. But we have not sent combat troops in the generally understood sense of the word.”
President John F. Kennedy, 1962
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President John F. Kennedy. The 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy emblemized the spirit and energy of a new generation. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” he intoned in one of the most memorial inaugural addresses ever given. At the time of his assassination on 22 November 1963, the U.S. commitment to Vietnam was limited to some 16,000 troops, most of them in the role of advisors.
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