The frustration and futility of the war in Southeast Asia were summarized most succinctly in a pair of 1968 official communications. The first was a wrap-up cable from Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp, CinCPAC, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent on 1 January 1968. It included, among other comments, the following: "From January through 15 December 1967, 122,960 attack sorties were flown in Rolling Thunder route packages I through V and in Laos ... Air attacks throughout North Vietnam and Laos destroyed or damaged 5,261 motor vehicles, 2,475 railroad rolling stock ... the enemy has been able to replace or rehabilitate many of the items damaged or destroyed, and transport inventories are roughly at the same level they were at the beginning of the year ... Economic losses to North Vietnam amounted to more than $130 million in 1967 ..."

Simple arithmetic shows that the average dollar damage per sortie was $1,057. For comparison, the laser head for a guided bomb cost $4,000; an EOGB guidance head cost $16,000. A typical strike sortie—-one flight north by one airplane—-cost $8,400 in direct operational costs, not including the weapons or the value of the pilot's life or time.

The conclusion was all too plain. It was costing many dollars to inflict a single dollar's worth of damage on the enemy. And that was noted in a paper written by Dr Alain C. Enthoven, who headed the Office of Systems Analysis in the Pentagon. "Our strategy of attrition has not worked. Adding 206,000 more US men to a force of 525,000, gaining only 27 additional maneuver battalions and 270 tactical fighters at an added cost to the US of S10 billion per year raises the question of who is making it costly for whom ... We know that despite a massive influx of 500,000 US troops, 1.2 million tons of bombs a year, 400,000 attack sorties per year, 200,000 enemy KIA (killed in action) in three years, 20,000 US KIA, etc., our control of the countryside and the defense of the urban areas is now essentially at pre-August 1965 levels. We have achieved stalemate at a high commitment. A new strategy must be sought."

Perhaps part of that pessimism was a reaction to the Tet offensive, which still provides some of the most bitter criticism of media coverage heard from military officers. Tet, while certainly no great victory, was in no military sense a defeat, according to them, and yet the reporting made it appear that the offensive was a major beating for the South Vietnamese and their Allies. For whatever reason, the beginning of 1968 was the time when the adherents of escalation and descalation first began open confrontation over policies in Southeast Asia. It marked President Johnson's decisions to stop the bombing north of the 20th parallel and to withdraw from the 1968 Presidential election campaign. Then later in the year all bombing north of the DMZ was halted, again on Johnson's orders. The man who had urged Navy pilots to "... bring back coonskin and nail it to the wall!" had changed both his tone and his tune.