"When Is A War Really A War?", U.S. News & World Report, March 13, 1967

This article explains the debate in Washington over whether the Vietnam conflict should be formally declared a war. It describes how U.S. leaders avoided calling it a war for political and legal reasons, even though thousands of Americans were fighting and dying there. Lawmakers argued that a formal declaration might make the situation worse internationally, so they continued to treat Vietnam as an “undeclared war.”