The correct options are:
- South Vietnam was in danger of losing the war.
South Vietnam was receiving increasing amounts of US military aid.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, known by his initials, LBJ, was the thirty-sixth President of the United States, who took office after the death of his predecessor John F. Kennedy in 1963 and which he held until 1969.
What finally triggered the US total intervention in the Vietnam War was a meeting held by Johnson with his advisors on July 21, 1964. In it he tried to devise a way to force the Saigon government to fight instead of negotiate, but the prevailing opinion was that the withdrawal of the resident advisers in the country would not achieve that, but the quick conquest by Hanoi. The direct intervention, the presidential advisors thought, would be very long, costly and bloody because the South is a country little interested in its survival.
President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation vessels to retaliate against the North Vietnamese fleet on August 5. Whether or not any of the attacks were true, the incident legitimized Johnson to request and obtain from Congress on August 6 the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution would confer full powers for the military advisers present in Vietnam to conduct operations outside the precincts of their bases, in addition to increasing the number of troops in that country, to be in the election campaign Johnson needed to show an image of strength against communism.
