 In October 1961, when General Maxwell Taylor and Walt Whitman Rostow advised sending 8,000 American combat troops to South Vietnam, McNamara rejected that recommendation as inadequate, stating that 8,000 troops would "probably not tip the scales decisively", instead recommending to Kennedy that he send 6 divisions to South Vietnam, advice the president rejected.In May 1962, McNamara paid his first visit to South Vietnam, where he told the press "every quantitative measurement...shows that we are winning the war".McNamara's "quantitative" style based upon much number-crunching by computers about trends in Vietnam missed the human dimension such as popular views and attitudes in South Vietnam, and that the South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm favored a "divide and rule" strategy of having multiple government departments compete against one another as a way of staying in power.