In February 1965, Bundy visited South Vietnam. On 7 February 1965, the Viet Cong attacked an American air base at Pleiku with mortars, killing 8 Americans and wounding 126. Bundy advised Johnson to begin a strategical bombing campaign against North Vietnam in retaliation. Bundy afterwards visited the Pleiku base where he was disturbed by the sight of the wounded servicemen, saying he never seen so blood in all his life. Upon his return to Washington, Bundy in a memo to the president wrote: "The situation in Vietnam is deteriorating, and without new U.S. action defeat appears inevitable-probably not in a matter of weeks or perhaps even months, but within the next year or so. There is still time to turn around, but not much. The stakes in Vietnam are extremely high, the American investment is very large, and the American responsibility is a fact of life which is palpable in the atmosphere of Asia, and even elsewhere. The international prestige of the United States, and a substantial part of our influence, are directly at risk in Vietnam." Bundy called for "graduated and continuing bombings" of North Vietnam as the best response. Bundy reported that he had seen in South Vietnam suggested that the majority of the South Vietnamese people believed "the Vietcong are going to win in the long run". When the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who was alarmed by Johnson's Vietnam policy proposed a summit in an attempt to change his policy, Bundy told the British ambassador Lord Harlech that such a summit would be "unhelpful". The columnist Walter Lippmann contacted Bundy asking him to advise Johnson to change his Vietnam policies, only to find that the National Security Adviser was solidly loyal to the president. Lippmann was astonished by Bundy's ignorance about Vietnamese history as he discovered Bundy had no idea that South Vietnam was a recent creation.