Joint warfare in South Vietnam, 1963–1969 the election of Richard Nixon, and the change of U.S. policy to Vietnamization, or giving the main combat role back to the South Vietnamese military. The North Vietnamese term for the large-scale introduction of U.S. ground forces, in 1965, is the "Local War", according to Gen. Trần Văn Trà, the [North Vietnamese] " Party concluded, the "United States was forced to introduce its own troops because it was losing the war. It had lost the political game in Vietnam...the situation allows us to shift our revolution to a new stage, that of decisive victory." The Party issued a resolution to
1968 in the Vietnam War Adams' iconic image of South Vietnamese General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan's execution of a Viet Cong operative was taken in 1968. The year also saw Walter Cronkite's call to honourably exit Vietnam because he thought the war was lost. This negative impression forced the US into the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam. US troop numbers peaked in 1968 with President Johnson approving an increased maximum number of US troops in Vietnam at 549,500. The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam War with the American spending US$ (US$ in 2019) on the war. The year also became the deadliest