Quoted in Bruce Miroff’s newly-released The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party, Sen. George McGovern in March 1965, on a CBS television panel on the escalation in Vietnam:
I think there will be a staggering loss of human life out of all proportion to the stakes involved and I see no guarantee that once we go through that kind of a murderous and destructive kind of military effort that the situation out there will be any better. In fact, I think it will be a lot worse.