 Every statistical indicator of progress , from " kill ratios " and " body counts " to village pacification , was fed to the press and to the Congress . " We are beginning to win this struggle " asserted Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey on NBC 's Today show in mid @-@ November . " We are on the offensive . Territory is being gained . We are making steady progress . " At the end of November , the campaign reached its climax when Johnson summoned Westmoreland and the new U.S. Ambassador , Ellsworth Bunker , to Washington , D.C. , for what was billed as a " high level policy review " . Upon their arrival , the two men bolstered the administration 's claims of success . From Saigon , pacification chief Robert Komer asserted that the CORDS pacification program in the countryside was succeeding , and that sixty @-@ eight percent of the South Vietnamese population was under the control of Saigon while only seventeen percent was under the control of the Viet Cong . General Bruce Palmer , Jr . , one of Westmoreland 's three Field Force commanders , claimed that " the Viet Cong has been defeated " and that " He can 't get food and he can 't recruit . He has been forced to change his strategy from trying to control the people on the coast to trying to survive in the mountains . " 
