By Pat Oliphant, February 1, 1966

"Pat Oliphant won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1966 with this cartoon showing Ho Chi Minh, president of North Vietnam, carrying a dead Viet Cong soldier. By 1966 there were 190,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam, and North Vietnam was receiving armaments and technical assistance from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. Ho had sent a note on January 24 to Communist leaders denouncing U.S. peace initiatives. At the same time, South Vietnamese officials had refused to participate in any peace talks with the Viet Cong's National Liberation Front, the North Vietnam-supported Communist guerilla movement within South Vietnam. A few days after this cartoon appeared, President Lyndon Johnson, along with key military and political advisors, traveled to Honolulu for a conference with South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu, and other Saigon government officials." (from "Pat Oliphant at the Library of Congress," http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/oliphant/part1.html.