Word: battalion
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Colonel Herbert maintains that when he served under Barnes and Franklin in Viet Nam, he reported to them a number of incidents involving murder, torture and mistreatment of prisoners; Herbert claims to have witnessed four such episodes. After one battle with the Viet Cong, he says, units of his battalion took some 15 prisoners, who were then put in custody of South Vietnamese troops accompanied by an American lieutenant...
...North Vietnamese radio reported that 17 helicopters had been shot down around Lolo, which they said was seized in an attack that "wiped out" one 600-man South Vietnamese battalion and "badly mauled" other units...
...Viet Nam War, in short, has produced its own version of the Orwellian Newspeak: Newcount. TIME Correspondent David Greenway recalls overhearing an American company commander, whose men had just found three enemy bodies, discussing with his platoon leaders what number to report to the battalion commander. "They decided on 20," writes Greenway. "But when I got back to Danang, I found the figure sent to Saigon on this engagement had grown...
...Laos last month, practically all 250 members of two companies of the ARVN 6th Airborne Battalion were killed or captured. Their loss has never been reported. One Vietnamese official said privately of ARVN officers: "They want to see how much the correspondents know before they provide the figures. The ratio is almost always said to be five enemy killed to one government soldier killed. We never get the real figure...
...propagandization of statistics has influenced U.S. policymakers. As early as 1962, then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said: "Every quantitative measurement we have shows we're winning this war." But those quantitative measurements had very likely been hoked up all along the line-from squad level to company to battalion and on up to McNamara's office...