Americans were extremely confused by the Tet Offensive. Their president and his military leaders had been telling them for years that the United States was winning the war and that it would soon be over. In fact, just a few months before the Tet Offensive, General William C. Westmoreland, commander of the American forces in Vietnam, had told Congress that the war would be over in about two more years. So Americans were shocked by such a strong show of force by an enemy that was supposedly almost defeated. Westmoreland tried to explain that "historically a force on the downgrade often tries to recover by means of some spectacular surge." The media's coverage of the Tet Offensive infuriated him; he fumed that the press and television transformed "what was undeniably a catastrophic military defeat for the enemy into...