Despite foundering efforts in the field, interservice dissension, and an emerging political crisis in the United States, American officials did not fundamentally reevaluate the war in 1967. The White House continued to hope for the best in Vietnam while trying to rein in the military's repeated requests for more soldiers and a wider war. For their part, Westmoreland, Wheeler, and other officers kept forwarding optimistic projections of the war despite continued bleak reports on conditions in the RVN. The ARVN was passive and seemed to be allowing U.S. troops to carry the burden of the fight, they suggested, while the enemy infiltrated and recruited despite American firepower, still determined the scale and nature of engagements, and could be expected to prolong the war to its advantage. Pacification was not going well, U.S. officers added, and their principal response, the air war, was not making a decisive impact.