A gradual escalation of the bombing, LBJ believed, would prevent China from intervening. Explaining his reasoning to journalists, he said U.S. bombing was “seduction, not rape.” Only “rape,” he claimed, was likely to draw China into the war. When Senator George McGovern met Johnson in 1965 to express concerns about possible Chinese intervention, LBJ told him not to worry: “I’m going to up her leg one inch at a time . . . I’ll get to the snatch before they know what’s happening.”

From the book American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and our National Identity, by Christian G. Appy