Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy as president after he was shot, also hoped to delay a decision about committing more American troops to Vietnam until after the presidential election in 1964. In fact, he campaigned that "we are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." However, an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964—an incident that some critics claim was provoked by the United States because the ships were inside North Vietnam's territorial waters—forced him to act otherwise. Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam. It was during these air raids that North Vietnam captured its first American prisoner of war...