21. The Scheme That Sent Hundreds of Thousands of Unfit Soldiers to Vietnam
When President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed office following JFK’s assassination in 1963, the US had 16,000 troops in Vietnam. The following year, the figure grew slightly to 23,000. In 1965, however, in response to requests from American commanders in Vietnam for ever more troops, the figure mushroomed to 185,000. By 1966 America was getting sucked ever deeper into a quagmire, as the troop count more than doubled from the preceding year to 385,000.
That insatiable demand for ever more American troops put the LBJ administration in a bind: where to get them, without risking a public backlash? The answer was to cut corners – drastically so – to send unfit draftees to Vietnam.