The Krulak Mendenhall mission was an American fact-finding expedition sent by President Kennedy's administration to South Vietnam in 1963. It investigated the progress of the war by the South Vietnamese regime and their US military advisers against the Viet Cong insurgency. The mission was led by Victor Krulak (pictured), a major general in the Marine Corps, and Joseph Mendenhall, a senior Foreign Service officer experienced in Vietnamese affairs. The four-day whirlwind trip came in the wake of increasingly strained relations between the United States and South Vietnam. In their submissions Krulak presented an optimistic report on the progress of the war, but Mendenhall presented a bleak picture of military failure and public discontent. Krulak said that the Vietnamese soldiers' efforts in the field would not be affected by the public's unease with President Ngô Đình Diệm's policies. Mendenhall concluded that those policies increased the possibility of religious civil war and led the South Vietnamese to believe that their quality of life would improve under the Viet Cong. The contradictory reports prompted Kennedy to ask, "You two did visit the same country, didn't you?" (Full article...). Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krulak_Mendenhall_mission> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1191: Third Crusade: Forces under Richard I of England defeated Ayyubid troops under Saladin in Arsuf, present-day Israel. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arsuf> 1812: Napoleonic Wars: The French Grande Armée forced the Russians to withdraw at the Battle of Borodino. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Borodino> 1893: British expatriates in Italy founded the Genoa Cricket & Athletic Club, today one of Italy's oldest association football clubs. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoa_C.F.C.> 1936: The last thylacine died in captivity in Hobart Zoo in Australia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine> 1986: Desmond Tutu became the first black person to lead the Church of the Province of Southern Africa. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu> 1996: American rapper Tupac Shakur was fatally shot multiple times in Las Vegas, dying from his injuries six days later. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tupac_Shakur> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: crickets: […] (US, slang, humorous) Used alone or in metaphorically descriptive phrases: absolute silence; no communication. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crickets> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   When a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.   --Taylor Caldwell <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Taylor_Caldwell>