The U.S. opens a 6-pack of "Whoop-Ass!"

The Old NVA VC Boys

Khe Sahn Firebase

They had a body-count in VietNam.  It's true.  They used to keep count of all the dead and wounded because it was the only way to keep score.  Each week, someone over here would tally up the casualties and send that number to some beaurocrat on the other side of the world so they could determine how much closer to victory we were.  Today they count dollars like they used to count bodies.  We should do with the dollars what they did with the bodies;  bury and forget them.

The VietNam War is referred to by the Vietnamese as "The American War."  They do this in an attempt to keep track of all their wars.  Be it the Chinese, the Russians, the Japanese, the French, or the Americans, the Vietnamese have been on the short end of the stick for a long, long time.

Here's a little FUN FACT for all the kids at home: From 1965-1972, the US deployed 29 types of high-explosive bombs, 13 types of fragmentation bombs, and released 5,382,000 tons of ordinance in the South and North of VietNam.  The US spread 76 million litres of Orange Dioxin Defoliation Agent into 607,500 hectares of forest and 89,500 tons of Napalm Incindiary resulting in 2,000,000 casualties dead or disabled, 70,000 orphaned, 200,000 children maimed or deformed, and more than 300,000 missing.  Today there are more than 20 million bomb craters in VietNam, while unexploded cluster bombs and undetonated land mines fill the countryside.  Many parts of Central VietNam are just the way we left it; the vegetation hasn't yet grown back, but at least the earth is still scorched.

Vinh Moc Tunnel System

At 3 million dead Vietnamese to our 60 thousand, we outscored them 50 to 1.  But after meeting with and talking to some North Vietnamese War Veterans, I'm thinking we probably shouldn't have done all that.  But then on the other hand, there is something very luscious about the smell of victory in the morning!