According to his own account of a Washington meeting, State Department official George Ball warned General Taylor and Secretary of Defense McNamara that introducing 8,000 or more American soldiers into South Vietnam might cause "a protracted conflict far more serious than Korea....The Vietnam problem was not one of repelling overt invasion but of mixing ourselves up in a revolutionary situation with strong anti-colonialist overtones."[1]: 247 Three other State Department officials also expressed their opposition to the introduction of American combat soldiers: Averell Harriman, Chester Bowles, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Secretary of State Rusk had reservations because Diệm was "a losing horse."[2]: 137