How many Casualties in Viet Nam from 1961 to 1963

[louis c]

In many arguments with my RW friends, the comparison between Viet Nam and Iraq will come up.

These morons contend that JFK started that war. I know, in fact, that the commitment of the US in that conflict goes back to the French-Indo China war in 1954 and the Geneva accords of 1956.

However, they contend that JFK was heavily involved in that war. I was 10 years old then, and later became a student of that war in 1969 and beyond.

My question to those who know more than I do is, "what were the US casualty figures in Viet Nam from January, 1961 to November 1963?"

I thank you in advance for your info.

louis c

[Career Prole]

1. All you want to know and more right here...

http://www.archives.gov/research_room/research_topics/vietnam_war_casualty_lists/statistics.html

[louis c]

3. 176

The answer is about 176.

Thank You and "Let's Go Pats"

[Career Prole]

7. Damn straight!

:toast:

[BrklynLiberal]

2. here......

<snip>
U.S. COMBAT POWER

Because U.S. involvement in Vietnam increased gradually after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, there is little consensus on when the war in Southeast Asia began.

Some date the war to the late 1950s. Others say it began on Aug. 5, 1964, when Lyndon Johnson announced air strikes against North Vietnam in retaliation for a reported torpedo attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

However, the Army's start date for the Vietnam War has been set by its Center of Military History as Dec. 11, 1961, when two helicopter companies consisting of 32 aircraft and 400 soldiers arrived in the country, an Army public affairs specialist said.

"It was the first major assemblage of U.S. combat power in Vietnam," explained Army historian Joe Webb.

Vietnam casualties, which amounted to 25 deaths from 1956 through 1961, climbed to 53 in 1962, 123 in 1963 and 216 in 1964, Pentagon statistics show.

At the time, the U.S. presence in Vietnam consisted mainly of military advisers. President John F. Kennedy increased their number from about 960 in 1961 to show Washington's commitment to containing communism.

But not until 1965, after Congress had approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, did Washington begin its massive escalation of the war effort. With a huge influx of soldiers, casualties in Vietnam soared to 1,926 in 1965 and peaked at 16,869 in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, data show.

In a major revision of U.S. military history in 1995, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said he believed the Gulf of Tonkin torpedo attack never occurred.

More than 58,000 U.S. military personnel died in Vietnam before the war ended in the mid-1970s.

In another comparison, British forces that created Iraq in the aftermath of World War One suffered 2,000 casualties from tribal reprisals, guerrilla attacks and a jihad proclaimed from the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, before conditions stabilized in 1921, according to U.S. military scholars.
<snip>

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/US_War_Dead_111403.htm

[louis c]

6. Thanks

[Adelante]

4. Here you go, louis c

Published on Friday, November 14, 2003 by Reuters
US War Dead in Iraq Exceeds Early Vietnam Years
by David Morgan

PHILADELPHIA - The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.

A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.


-snip-

Because U.S. involvement in Vietnam increased gradually after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, there is little consensus on when the war in Southeast Asia began.

Some date the war to the late 1950s. Others say it began on Aug. 5, 1964, when Lyndon Johnson announced air strikes against North Vietnam in retaliation for a reported torpedo attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

However, the Army's start date for the Vietnam War has been set by its Center of Military History as Dec. 11, 1961, when two helicopter companies consisting of 32 aircraft and 400 soldiers arrived in the country, an Army public affairs specialist said.

"It was the first major assemblage of U.S. combat power in Vietnam," explained Army historian Joe Webb.

-more-

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1114-01.htm">CommonDreams

[EVDebs]

5. Found a site that shows 1961 thru 1965 1864 is the number KIA

"Casualties - US vs NVA/VC"

http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html

From my own research on this, Fletcher Prouty's book "JFK" shows how Eisenhower's administration deflected the vote that was to take place. Also shows the Catholic exodus from the North and susbsequent repopulation into the Mekong helped spur VC activity in the South.

JFK wanted the US out of Vietnam, which is what prompted his assassination.

[BrklynLiberal]

9. HEY! Great minds !!!!!!!!

[BrklynLiberal]

8. I read somewhere that JFK's determination to pull out of VietNam

may have been the reason that he was assassinated (by the CIA and others in the Military/industrial complex who had much to benefit from continuing the conflict and thereby all the defense spending tht would result)

[rinsd]

11. I doubt it....Oliver Stone's dreams not withstanding (nt)

[EVDebs]

15. How about some good old dogshit reality then, NSAMs ...

"A Tale of Two NSAMS"

http://www.copi.com/articles/2nsams.html

Also, L. Fletcher Prouty's book " JFK: The CIA,
Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy" (1992)

and John Newman's book "JFK and Vietnam" (1992) both do good work showing that Kennedy wasn't going to let the real problem, Berlin, be turned on worthless real estate in SE Asia.

[Swede]

14. In "The Fog of War" McNamara says Johnson did indeed ratchet up

the war,and that he,Johnson, disagreed with Kennedy's idea of withdrawing from Vietnam.

[Blue Wally]

16. I hate to rain on your parade

The military-industrial complex lost big time during the Vietnam era. Most of the "big ticket" technology items got deferred funding after mid-1965 as the military budget was diverted into operating funds for the troops and infrastructure costs for base buildup in Vietnam. The same thing holds true today. Military budget money is being poured ionto the rathole of Iraq and weaposn system modernization is being deferred. During the 12 years of peak Vietnam spending, we lost a "generation" of technolgy upgrades and force modernization to the Soviets and we didn't catch up till the eighties. Low tech wars do not aid the military-industrial complex. High tech force modernization is their pig trough.

[illflem]

10. Pre 1965 Vietnam was much like Iraq

in that a administration's plan was to train and supply the South Vietnamese Army to fight their own battle.
History proves how well that panned out...

[KoKo]

12. Also...a great site: The History Place...A Vietnam Timeline..

which gives excellent info about the start of Vietnam with the French involvement to the end..year by year. The paralles with Iraq are creepy...although the circumstances and countries are so different. But it's worth a scan to those who weren't around at that time. It's a "viewer friendly" site for those who don't want to get bogged down in too much reading.

Check it out...

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index.html

[imenja]

13. casualties began as early as 1956

according to the link Carole Prole provided. Between 1956-60, 9 Americans died. I don't know if these were military advisers or CIA. Perhaps someone else knows.

Edit: upon examining that web site again, it looks like it only includes military personnel. My guess is that if CIA agents were included, the early totals would be somewhat higher.

[EVDebs]

17. You might also be able to locate by individuals, and possibly

by all in a year to year basis on http://thewall-usa.com/

Also, a story not well known : US ambassador to Thailand (since Nov 1, 1963 possibly Nov 3rd, but this can be verified..Diem's assassination was around this time too) was Graham A. Martin
whose adopted son, Glenn Dill Mann was KIA in aftermath of the Ia Drang Valley battles of Nov 1965. See http://www.popasmoke.com/kia/incidents.php?incident_id=35

This is important because of Amb. Martin's later actions as Nixon's appointed Amb. to Italy in 1969, and later as Nixon's appointed Amb. to South Vietnam in 1973. CIA man Frank Snepp's book "Decent Interval" incorrectly names the adopted son as Glenn Martin, as does "Fall of Saigon" author David Butler. (Note, Thailand was already beginning to set up the drugtrade since OSS legend William "Wild Bill" Donovan was an Amb. to Thailand in the early 1950s; the further importance of WHERE Amb. Martin serves ...Italy, and S.Vietnam, underscores this as also his prior State Dept service in France during the time the mob is clearing the Marseilles port for French IndoChina war materiel shipment-- see "MARTIN GRAHAM ANDERSON
France 1947-1955 Thailand 1963-1967 Italy 1969-1973 Vietnam 1973-1975" http://www.namebase.org/main2/Graham-Anderson-Martin.html )


Also, stolen papers...see "Saigon Embassy Files Kept by Ambassador
Graham Martin: Copies Made for the NSC, 1963-1975 (1976)" at
http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/Finding%20Aids/Saigon%20Embassy%20Files%20Kept%20by%20Ambassador%20Graham%20Martin.htm


""In January 1978, the North Carolina State Police found a cache of classified documents in the trunk of a car that had been stolen from former U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam Graham A. Martin. They turned the documents over to the FBI. The documents were embassy files Martin had taken with him when he evacuated Saigon on April 29, 1975, just hours before the city fell to the Communists. The Justice Department, in considering prosecuting Martin for misuse of classified documents, sent copies of the files to the National Security Council for a damage assessment. The copies remained in NSC files until 1982, when the NSC determined that they should have been considered presidential papers and sent them to the Ford Library""

Later, Nixon tried to use forged cables to implicate JFK in the Diem assassination, see E. Howard Hunt and his Sept. 1971 'spicing up' of cables www.rense.com/general44/overthrow.htm

[EVDebs]

19. More on those cables forged by E Howard Hunt and the Martin stash

""The CIA documents recently released to the Assassinations Review Board are forgeries by none other than, E. Howard Hunt (a suspect in the assassination himself). See: THE ENDS OF POWER (1978) by H.R. Haldeman, pg. 218:

"These acts ranging from Hunts bizarre action in the ITT case...to the forgery of CIA cables linking John Kennedy to the assassination of South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem...""

from the www.rense.com/general44/overthrow.htm website

So, what was Amb. Martin doing with all those stolen cables that are now in the Ford library for 'safekeeping' ?

[BrotherBuzz]

18. Ask your moran friends why...

Every soldier in the early years read "Street Without Tears" by Bernard Fall. It was a vivid account of the French defeat in Vietnam that was published in 1961, and it soon became their Bible that gave them a little insight to what they were going up against. They were just trying to be informed, and I suggest your friends read it in an attempt to do the same.

[EVDebs]

20. Iraq-nam ? n/t

[tralfaz]

21. troops

You might as well compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. You can't really compare the two because we were only "advising" in Vietnam from 1961-1963 with really low troop levels.