Vietnam Draft: McNamara INCLUDED the mentally & physically disabled (link)

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moderators: the term 'Moron Corps' is very offensive to me and others, but sadly, that is what these 354,000 men were called and it is history...many ended up on the Vietnam Wall...and lots of articles have been written about McNamara's "Moron Corps", including the one below by Salon...perhaps these revelations will save lives today, in the Iraqmire....we should TELL THE TRUTH about the Vietnam draft, in order to STOP the Iraqmire Draft.....rumsfeld himself described the draft as being 'sucked into the intake'...

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http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2002/05/29/mcnamara/index_np.html

McNamara's "Moron Corps"
HBO's "Path to War" leaves out some of the most shameful brainstorms of the Vietnam War's masterminds -- including a little-known recruitment program that turned the mentally and physically deficient into cannon fodder.

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By Myra MacPherson


Secretary of Defense robert mcNamara (Vietnam Quagmire)
now replaced by Secretary of Defense donald rumsfeld (Iraqmire)



-snips-

May 29, 2002 | The highly acclaimed HBO movie, "Path to War", powerfully details President Lyndon Johnson's descent into the disastrous quagmire of Vietnam. LBJ is depicted, in part, as a victim of his defense secretary, Robert McNamara's, intellectual duplicity. But the film spares McNamara from the deeper moral condemnation he deserves, entirely overlooking, for instance, one of his most heinous acts as the chief architect of the war -- a cynical recruitment gambit aimed at the underclass known as "Project 100,000."

By 1966, President Johnson was fearful that calling up the reserves or abolishing student deferments would further inflame war protesters and signal all-out war. And so, even after McNamara began privately declaring the war was unwinnable, the defense secretary devised Project 100,000.

Under his direction, an alternative army was systematically recruited from the ranks of those who had previously been rejected for failing to meet the armed services' physical and mental requirements. Recruiters swept through urban ghettos and Southern rural back roads, even taking at least one youth with an IQ of 62. In all, 354,000 men were rolled up by Project 100,000. Touted as a Great Society program that would provide remedial education and an escape from poverty, the recruitment program offered a one-way ticket to Vietnam, where "the Moron Corps," as they were pathetically nicknamed by other soldiers, entered combat in disproportionate numbers. Although Johnson was a vociferous civil rights advocate, the program took a heavy toll on young blacks. A 1970 Defense Department study disclosed that 41 percent of Project 100,000 recruits were black, compared with 12 percent in the armed forces as a whole. What is more, 40 percent of Project 100,000 recruits were trained for combat, compared with 25 percent for the services generally.

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ANOTHER SAD NOTE about 'McNamara's Morons'

SPECIAL dog tags were issued to 'McNamara's Morons', so they could be clearly identified....many ended up on the Vietnam Wall, or ran away if they could...the regular troops did not want to be with them, feeling they jeopardized others' lives, during battlefield decisions...often those tagged "US67" were just sent to their deaths....


http://www.mooremilitaria.com/dog_tags.htm

Vietnam-Era US Army Dog Tags, the Army Service Number was 8 digits and had one of the following prefixes: RA (Regular Army, volunteer enlisted), US (an enlisted draftee), NG (National Guard), ER (Enlisted Reserve), O (Officer). When using draftee designation "US", the first number is either a 5 or a 6. 6 was considered a bad number as it was reserved for the "Project 100,000". The second number is the "Army Area" the draftee was from. 1 or 2 indicated Northeast (after the 2nd Army was absorbed by the 1st Army in the 50's), 3 South, 4 Southwest, 5 Mid-West, 6 California, Pacific Coast, Hawaii, Alaska. 0 indicated outside the US such as Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, or America Samoa. Of interest, is that US67 numbers indicated one of McNamara's Project 100,000 draftees who had failed the Armed Forces minimal IQ test, but were drafted anyway to meet the manpower needs.