 On March 31st, President Johnson had ordered a bombing halt in all areas of North Vietnam except the immediate panhandle above the DMZ, an area through which massive numbers of infiltrators and their supplies of war continue to pour. As a result of this decision, the much-awaited truce talks with Hanoi began in Paris on May 13. During September, Ambassador Avril Harriman, President Johnson's chief negotiator at the talks, reported that after four months and a total of 21 formal sessions, there still had been no substantive discussions. The North Vietnamese negotiators clung to their long-held demand that all bombing must stop before they will discuss anything else. The president in close counsel with his top military and foreign affairs advisers repeatedly asked for assurances that Hanoi would reciprocate with some form of military de-escalation should the bombing be completely stopped. No such assurance was forthcoming. As the president and his advisers knew, dissident voices within the nation, within his own party, continued to sound long and loud for a complete bombing halt, and some even continued to challenge the American commitment in Vietnam. The president decided to make his administration stand in Vietnam crystal clear once again and to spell out in detail the compelling reasons for continuing to bomb the North Vietnam Panhandle. The forum for the occasion was the American Legion's 50th Annual National Convention in New Orleans. When the first American soldiers went into South Vietnam in the early 1960s, it was because this nation saw that if the communist aggression, aggression, if that aggression there succeeded, the entire region of Southeast Asia would be in mortal danger, and the threat of world war would be more ominous. We have heard many voices raised in opposition to this stand. Indeed I have sought some of these voices out. We have searched every avenue, every avenue of thought and opinion on this issue. That so troubles all of our people today. Now let me make it as clear as I possibly can why we are still and will continue to bomb the Panhandle of North Vietnam. Why re-establishing the DMZ I think is so critical to peace in Vietnam. In the area just below the DMZ, we and our allies have some four divisions of men and unnecessary people to support them involving more than 60,000 Americans and one division of South Vietnamese. Just behind them and the rest of I-Corps are an additional 164,000 American and allied fighting men. Those close in to the DMZ are subjected daily to artillery fire and the direct movement of enemy forces across that DMZ against them, and all of those men in I-Corps are constantly subjected to a massive flow of supplies and infiltrators and rocket fire through the Panhandle to the northern part of the battlefield. Now if we can't take our men in and we're not going to take our men out, it appears to me third that the best thing we can do is to bring our planes to bear in the Panhandle across the line against the artillery and the trucks and the rocket launchers that are being fired on our men and to bring it to bear against the enemy trucks and the enemy troops and the enemy supplies that are coming through because every secondary explosion and there were thousands there last month means that that powder and that steel doesn't have to be brought back from South Vietnam if it stopped in North Vietnam by some American soldier in his body. So this afternoon I appeal to you to support your country, to support your fighting men, to support peace by maintaining strength in this country, by refusing always to bow to the demands of the moment, by refusing always to sacrifice principle in the things we hold dear, by standing as firm at home as you expect your sons to stand abroad and ask yourself if you're doing it. The nation's steadfastness in Vietnam was brought home forcibly in mid-September with the soldiers funeral for Major General Keith Ware, Commander of the famed First Infantry Division. The General, a Medal of Honor winner for heroism in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, was directing troops in combat when his helicopter caught fire and crashed.