As Saunders pointed out...if you look at what Kennedy had ACTUALLY DONE rather than speculating on what he might have done it's hard to see JFK withdrawing all of our troops and far more likely that he would have continued to increase the number of troops in Vietnam. You could make the argument that it was unlikely that Eisenhower would have increased troop levels dramatically because he didn't do so. You can make the argument that Nixon would have decreased the number of troops because that's what he DID. You can't make the same argument for either Kennedy or for Johnson because BOTH increased troop levels substantially. THAT is what Saunders is referring to when she talks of Kennedy's "rocketing" of the number of US troops in Vietnam and THAT is why Saunders is highly skeptical of those who believe Kennedy was about to pull out of Vietnam.
Your problem is that Kennedy's "policy" never was acted upon and you REALLY don't have any way of knowing if it ever would have been other than the Monday Morning quarterbacking done by people like Robert McNamara trying to paint John F. Kennedy in a favorable light. Saunders (and myself) are going by Kennedy's actions...you are going by a "plan" that may or may not have ever been carried out.
