1. Coordinate with the press more from the start and make it known some things don't get reported.
2. Provide context for photographs - if a SV cop has a gun pointed at someone's head in a random street, make sure you tell them *why*.
3. Let South Vietnam elect its own government but bar Communist candidates. Make it clear we are there to help them, not rule them (the truth, however, may lay somewhere in between).
4. Hit the dams in North Vietnam early, hit the dams hard, and then hit 'em again.
5. Find a way to neutralize McNamera politicially, chemically, profitably, whatever so long as it works.
6. Talk to Ho Chi Minh earlier. It doesn't mean we have to make him into a flag-waving American puppet, just see if he could be nudged into the Yugoslav camp of non-Soviet Communism.
7. No Operation Ranch Hand! Agent Orange and Super Orange stay home as do Green, Pink, and Blue. No, that is not a joke, they were actually called the Rainbow Herbicides...
8. If the South is to survive we expect to be there indefinitely, so plant a few bases and prop up the economy with industry and infrastructure.
9. As already said, no Hamlet or other similar programs please.
10. Stop the political interference and let the military loose to do its job. War is hell, it always will be, and while our tolerance of casualties is far less either accept that they happen or GTFO. You don't get the best of both in the 1960s/1970s.