Composite Timeline

In summary, despite continued warnings from the intelligence community and external analysts, the USG continued to maintain the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, suspending operations from time to time as the election of 1968 approached.

One comment about the uniformly negative comments on the effectiveness of the bombing campaign cited above.   What they uniformly failed to take into account was the impact of the bombing operations away from the battlefield.  MiG aircraft and SA-2 missiles are expensive items, and support of  NVN as a client state would continue to be a drain on the USSR, even after the war was over.  Eventually, thie Soviet economy was unable to keep pace and dissolved, ending the Cold War.  So, in a real sense, the US lost of the Battle of Vietnam, but won the Cold War.  Somehow people tend to forget the latter.

https://sites.google.com/site/50yearsagointheflightlog/main-1/aftermath/documents