The Atrocities Of The Vietnam War

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War, the body count was the most important statistic to the U.S. Military command. The efforts to quantify the complexities of the war into simple numbers pervaded every aspect of U.S. military presence in Vietnam. Secretary of Defense from 1962-1967, Robert McNamara, did a lot to persuade high-level policymakers that a "win" in Vietnam was just a matter of improving the numbers.
The most devastating consequence of this mindset was the great number of Vietnamese civilians killed without provocation. In a war lacking front lines and territorial objectives, "attriting (slowing eroding the number of soldiers) the enemy" was the major objective. Although most were ridiculously unreliable, the body count was the index of progress. The scale of destructiveness of the "firefights" made it nearly impossible to obtain an accurate number of enemy killed in action (KIA).
The Vietcong was not an army in the traditional American sense. They were not uniformed like most industrialized ...

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