User:Veritas Aeterna/Draft Vietnam War Nick Turse

Nick Turse, in “Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam,” argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free-fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as VietCong, and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian deaths and casualties inflicted by U.S. troops. One example is Operation Speedy Express, an operation by the 9th Infantry Division, which was described by John Paul Vann as, in effect, “many My Lais”. In more detail,

— Air force captain, Brian Wilson, who carried out bomb-damage assessments in free-fire zones throughout the delta, saw the results firsthand. “It was the epitome of immorality…One of the times I counted bodies after an air strike — which always ended with two napalm bombs which would just fry everything that was left —I counted sixty-two bodies. In my report I described them as so many women between fifteen and twenty-five and so many children —usually in their mothers’ arms or very close to them —and so many old people.” When he later read the official tally of dead, he found that it listed them as 130 VC killed.