text: Good grief. In the progressive liberal rush to condemn anything and everything Republican or conservative, the truth is always sacrificed. The fact is that everyone wanted to get out of Vietnam, including Nixon, Congress and the Senate. Nixon got elected on the basis of getting the U.S. out of the Vietnam War for goodness sake, and reduced troop numbers in Vietnam from around 500,000 in Jan. 1969 when he took office, down to 24,000 in 1972 and a mere 50 in 1973. Despite any rhetoric at the time, no one including Nixon was about to take any political risk of moving troops back into Vietnam.