Word: newcount
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...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...
...highly touted "Hamlet Evaluation System" that Newcount has reached its zenith. In late 1969, HES reported that 92.6% of the countryside was under government control. Amid general ridicule, the figure was "revised" to 87.9%. Last week President Thieu announced that 99.8% of the population and 99.4% of the hamlets and villages were controlled by the government. Yet even if the hamlets rated A (for fully government-controlled), few ranking officials would care to spend the night lest the Communists stage a lethal raid...
...most basic criticism of Newcount centers on the notion that success or defeat can be measured by counting bodies. South Vietnamese troops may well be doing better than their critics will ever willingly concede, but faked body counts and phony pacification figures are not the way to prove it. The North Vietnamese sustained three times as many casualties as the French at Dienbienphu. As a former U.S. adviser in Viet Nam notes, it is patently absurd to suppose that, "when the South Vietnamese are chasing each other aboard a helicopter to get off a hill, they are going to stop...
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