McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War

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I wrote McNamara's folly to tell the story of a very sad and tragic chapter in the Vietnam War and hopefully it will contribute to the possibility that it will never happen again today I'd like to give you an overview of what happened for me the story began one summer day in 1967 when I was sitting in the Armed Forces induction Center in Nashville Tennessee at one point a sergeant came out to talk to us and tell us that we were headed to Fort Benning Georgia to begin our army training it was at the height of the Vietnam War and I had volunteered for service in the US Army the sergeant asked is there anyone here who is a college graduate I'll raise my hand and he motioned for me to follow him and he led me down a hallway to where a young man was seated and he informed me that the man was named Johnny Gupton who was also being assigned to Fort Benning and he told me he said I want you to take charge of Gupton go with him every step of the way he explained that Gupton could neither read nor write and he said he's gonna need help filling out paperwork when you get to Fort Benning and then he said make sure he doesn't get lost he's one of McNamara's morons I had never heard the term and I was surprised that the sergeant would openly insult this man seated in front of him well in a few weeks I would learn that McNamara's morons was a term that many officers and sergeants used to low IQ men who were taken into the Armed Forces under a special program devised by Robert McNamara who was the Secretary of Defense the sergeant left us for a while and when he returned he had a big envelope that was sealed and inside it were my personnel records and Gupta's personnel records and I was instructed to take the envelope and when I got off the bus at Fort Benning to give it to the sergeant's well Gupton and I traveled by plane and and by bus to Georgia and along the way I tried to make small talk with him I I asked her what state he was from he didn't know I found out later that he was from Tennessee he lived in one of the isolated poverty pockets in the eastern part of the state in the Appalachian Mountains he was very thin emaciated unhealthy looking as we talked or trying to talk I was surprised that he knew nothing about the situation he was in he didn't understand what basic training was all about he didn't even know that America was at war I tried to explain what was happening but at the end I could tell that he was still on a fog in basic training he was virtually helpless we had to make his bunk for him every morning because he could not make up his bunk to army specifications I had two ties boots every morning until one trainee had the patience and took the time to teach in that skill he had trouble with commands like left face and right face because he didn't know his left from his right he had trouble marching when the sergeant screamed at him he was terrified and confused on the rifle range he was erratic and dangerous with his handling his rifle and the sergeants feared that he would accidentally shoot himself or some one else finally he was put on permanent KP that means kitchen police that's working in the kitchen all day scrubbing and and cleaning in the mess hall by the way for all the men at fort benning that i mentioned i have changed their names to protect their privacy and also the protect the privacy of their families well why in the world was such a man inducted later I found out that I found out the historical background during the Vietnam War the US government used the military draft to fill the ranks of the Armed Forces whenever there was a shortage of volunteers in 1966 the war in Vietnam began to heat up and more and more men were needed how could McNamara and Lyndon Johnson round up enough men to send a war now there were thousands of volunteers but there weren't enough volunteers to fill all the slots that were needed Johnson and McNamara could have drafted college boys but they didn't want to do that because it would anger middle-class voters likewise they could have sent men from the National Guard and the reserves to Vietnam but that too would have been politically unpopular the Vietnam War was very unpopular with many young Americans so large numbers of men avoided the draft in a variety of different ways by taking advantage of various exemptions give you a few examples parenthood would win an exemption so some men got married and tried to have a child as quickly as possible if you had a letter from a family doctor about some medical condition you could get an exemption some men gained disqualifications by contriving to fail their pre induction physic exams for example one young man in Michigan ate three large pizzas each night for six months so they gained a lot of weight and when he went in for the the physical exam he exceeded the military's weight limit for his height he was disqualified some men jabbed their arms with needles to pass themselves off as heroin addicts professional football players were immune virtually immune to being drafted in 1966 out of 960 professional football players the draft took only two the rest found refuge in the National Guard or reserves McNamara and Johnson were desperate how were they going to get the warm bodies they needed for the military so they decided to induct men who had failed the the mental test for entry into the Armed Forces on October 1 1966 McNamara launched his program which was called Project 100,000 because he wanted to induct 100,000 low aptitude men each year now that's each year the program was less larger than that but 100,000 each year and when he announced it he puffed up his program with high sounding rhetoric saying that he would salvage these men rehabilitate these men he would raise their level of intelligence I imagine the situation one day a man is unqualified he's unfit for military duty but lo and behold the next day he is deemed qualified now he is fit for duty by the end of the war McNamara's program had taken three hundred and fifty four thousand low aptitude men into all branches of the armed forces the army got 21% the Marine Corps got 10% that maybe got 10% in the Air Force got 9% among the troops they were often known as McNamara's morons or the more encore or McNamara's boys or McNamara's 100,000 and by the way you may notice that I talk only about men during the Vietnam War women were not subject to the draft although I should point out that about 11,000 American women were in the military most of them nurses and they volunteered for service in Vietnam along with thousands of civilian women who worked for the Red Cross and other agencies like that during the war years 67 American women died in Vietnam now back to Fort Benning toward the end of basic I suffered from heat exhaustion and I was sent to a hospital for a while and then I was sent to an outfit called special training company for rehabilitation special training company was filled with men who were unable to pass basic training and it was there that I got to see firsthand what life was like for dozens of these project 100,000 men at special training company the men were supposed to try to pass a PT test that was what they primarily worked on passed the Beatty the physical test in order to graduate but most of the men failed miserably because of their mental limitations let me just give you one example one of the event on the physical test was called the grenade throw you had a practice grenade it was the explosives had been removed so it was not dangerous in that sense you had to throw the grenade 90 feet to a flat target spread out on the ground and it looked just like a giant dartboard it had a bull's-eye and then it had the concentric circles around it and the scoring was just like four darts the closer you came to the bull's eye the more points you made to simulate combat conditions the army required the men to kneel down on one knee you had to have one knee on the ground because that's where you would throw in combat if you were behind a barrier and so the men had to get down on one knee and in order to reach the target what they should have done was to throw the grenade and a high arc the way a centerfielder would throw if he's throwing a baseball to home plate a high arc but the men couldn't understand that concept and they would throw in a straight line like a pitcher throwing a ball to a catcher the sergeant's tried to demonstrate and explain that you needed that high arc the men to be and just they couldn't understand it I would take some of them out in the evening and try to show them how to do it by giving them a little mind game I would say okay imagine that there's a bird flying up there in the sky throw your grenade and try to hit that bird it didn't work they just couldn't understand that concept of throwing in a high arc so they never even hit the target much less the bullseye the problem was their mental limitation and the mental limitation was also seen when they went to the rifle range now to qualify with an m14 rifle at that time the military wanted to simulate combat conditions so the tests involved the trainee in front standing in front of a hillside of brushy hillside and there were pop-up targets at different places and you never knew when the pop-up target would appear you might be looking for a target and one pops up over here at the fifty meters and stays up only 5 seconds and then it goes down oh wait wait here's one at 75 meters 5 seconds and then it goes down back there there's one at 200 meters flips up for 5 seconds then it goes down the problem the men had was that they weren't quick-witted enough they weren't quick in their thinking and if they saw one like over here at 75 and they raised their rifle and take aim and fire but by then it was too late Wainwright we just went a hundred meters over here that have to shift try to aim it and squeeze off around before it went down they weren't quick enough they couldn't do it so they flunked out on the the rifle test and and obviously today we're not well-suited for firing a rifle in combat so what happened to these men well it's obvious they should have been sent home they should have been discharged in fact many company commanders tried to get them discharged they would write memos call on the phone try to get these guys to go home get them out of the army but unfortunately both the Army and the Marine Corps were facing severe manpower shortages in Vietnam and they were reluctant to discharge anyone so most of McNamara's boys went to Vietnam now remember we're talking about three hundred and fifty four thousand men in Project 100,000 most of them went to Vietnam and then half of them who were sent to Vietnam were assigned to combat units and the death toll was appalling here's the number of men project 100,000 men who were killed in Vietnam five thousand four hundred and seventy-eight let me say that again five thousand four hundred and seventy eight their fatality rate was three times higher than the fatality rate for your average GI we don't know how many were wounded we don't know the number of the wounded but it was estimated to be about twenty thousand men wounded and of course many of them were permanently disabled including an estimated 500 amputees well who were these men the book has a lot of stories about these men I want to read you one Barry bromo and his nephew Robert ended up in Vietnam at the same time Barry said I loved Robert like a brother we grew up together he was only one month younger Barry served in Vietnam as an infantry platoon leader in 1967-68 and he saw a lot of combat winning a Bronze Star for his courage on the battlefield during his tour he learned that Robert had been drafted and was being trained at Fort Lewis Washington to be an infantryman destined for Vietnam Barry was alarmed because Robert was quote very slow and had failed the Army's mental test but then along came project 100,000 which lowered standards and made him draftable a host of people his relatives his comrades at Fort Lewis his sergeants his officers wrote to the commanding general at Fort Lewis asking that Robert not be sent into combat because as one relative put it he would die but the general turned down the request once in Vietnam Robert was sent to an infantry unit near the border of North Vietnam one of the most dangerous combat areas during a patrol he was shot in the neck while trying to help a wounded friend he did not die instantly but heavy gunfire kept a medic reaching him Barry said he drowned in his own blood at the request of the family Barry was given permission to leave Vietnam and accompany Roberts body home to Rialto California the aluminum coffin was sealed and draped with a flag and the family was not allowed to view the remains it was army policy to discourage or forbid viewing when a body was badly mutilated looking back Barry said that Robert really didn't have much luck while others were getting deferments he was drafted while congressman's sons were getting exemptions for braces on their teeth Robert was drafted as part of Project 100,000 in a speech delivered 42 years later Barry Ramos said that the family had never recovered from losing Robert his death almost destroyed us with anger and sorrow some people think that you don't have to be very bright to be successful in combat that's not true men who were slow in their thinking were very vulnerable to survive in combat you had to be smart and you had to think quickly you had to know how to use your rifle effectively and keep it clean and operable you had to know how to navigate through jungles and rice paddies without alerting the enemy and you had to know how to communicate and cooperate with other members of your team a Pentagon official Elliott coin said the dull-witted soldier does not simply get himself killed he causes the death of others as well and here is what one Vietnam veteran said his name is Chief Warrant Officer William esto if you take someone with an IQ of 40 and give him a rifle he's more dangerous to you than he is to the enemy I almost got shot twice and had one guy almost nail me with a light anti-armor weapon when he was startled by a sudden noise if you put a low IQ man and an infantry patrol you have to spend most of your time making sure he doesn't kill a comrade by accident and doesn't get himself killed during contact because he's totally unaware of what's going on around him imagine sending a five-year-old and to combat that's what project 100,000 was all about another veteran Army veteran named GJ loud served with the 1st Infantry Division in 1969 and he remembered a man that he called Jerry didn't use his real name he called him Jerry who he said was a member of McNamara's 100000 here's what lau said one night Jerry was out on the perimeter standing night guard a very popular officer had been out setting his men in position and was returning to inside the wire there is a challenge procedure just like you see in the movies halt who goes there lieutenant saw him so advance and be recognized that's not it exactly but you get the idea you order the person to halt and then do whatever it takes to identify them as a friend or a foe normally not a difficult task given the obvious differences between the average Vietnamese and US Americans but for some reason Jerry saw the officer of approaching and shouted out halt and then immediately opened fire killing him on the spot the killing caused consternation in the camp the man under the officers command immediately made it known to any and all that Jerry was a dead man period end of discussion someone must have taken that threat seriously because Jerry was gone at first light never saw him again my book does not contain 100% grimm sad stories there were some positive stories I tell about some officers and sergeants and comrades who were sensitive and compassionate towards low IQ men they are the heroes of my book some of the officers and sergeants protected low IQ men by keeping them out of combat and giving them relatively safe jobs away from danger the man I told you about at the very beginning that I went into basic training with Johnny Gupton he was sent to Vietnam and he survived because he was protected by a sergeant sergeant gave him non dangerous jobs away from combat the sergeant sympathized with Gupton because he the sergeant had grown up with a sister whom he called mentally handicapped now I'd like to discuss Robert McNamara one historian said that during the Vietnam war among career military people Robert McNamara was the most hated man in America and I quote one officer in my book who said that because of project 100,000 quote Robert McNamara deserves to burn in hell many people wonder what was McNamara thinking how could he be so cruel well here's the background McNamara was a lover of technology like many Americans in the 1960s he was dazzled by this exciting new world of computers and high technology and he thought he could win the vietnam war by using advanced technology and computerized analyses when he launched project 100,000 he promised that the armed forces would raise the IQ level of the men he said that although the men may have failed in school they wouldn't fail now because the military was the world's greatest educator of skilled manpower and it possessed an impressive array of state-of-the-art multimedia equipment he believed this is no joke he believed that he could raise the intelligence of low ability men through the use of video tapes he said this is a direct quote this is a direct quote from one of his speeches a low aptitude student can use video tapes as an aid to his formal instruction and end up by becoming as proficient as a high aptitude student well this idea was considered laughable and naive and ridiculous by many educators and psychologists yes of course video can be a wonderful useful aid in instruction it can help students to learn but it's not a magical medium that can raise the person's IQ by 20 points Deborah Shaklee a biographer who wrote a detailed book about McNamara said that in regard to project 100,000 McNamara was quote a naive believer in technological miracles well how did things turn out where his videotapes capable of producing miracles we'll never know because very few men in Project 100,000 actually received video instruction there was a war going on and thousands of American fighting men were being killed or severely wounded Army and Marine platoons in Vietnam were desperate for replacements training centers were under great pressure to get troops to Vietnam as quickly as possible after the war dead McNamara ever expressed regret over a project 100,000 Deborah Shapley says that to the very end of his life and he lived a long time you live it you lived in 93 she said that to the very end of his life he refused to apologize or admit an error he bitterly she said he bitterly resented the term McNamara's more on Quora which he had heard for years and he steadfastly believed that the program was beneficial to individual men and to society in general what was going on well he obviously was ignoring the many accounts of suffering and death and he was just looking at the success stories about some project 100,000 men who did well in the service yes you heard me right some project 100,000 men did indeed do well and to be fair I created a chapter called success stories let me read you an example of a success story chief hospital corpsman Dan I'm sorry chief hospital corpsman Don Phelps of Oxnard California who was in charge of a large sick bay on a navy ship recalled an assistant named Aylmer who was assigned to him over his objections Phelps wanted his sickbay to be immaculately clean so that it would outshine and out show any and all spaces the board he didn't want to take on Elmer as an assistant because he was one of McNamara's boys he had no schooling and no chance of a responsible job in later life furthermore he was not too bright and he had to be taught the concepts of clean and sterile but Phelps was ordered to take elmer and he was immediately surprised by the young man's solid performance and eagerness to please elmer made the sickbay Sparkle with cleanliness Phelps said I couldn't have asked for a cleaner sharper space if I had a crew of five men working for me Phelps said that because of Ellmers mental limitations he never gave him any large amount of detailed work but in the basic cleaning jobs that he assigned elmer took extreme pride in what he did accomplish he was very polite and developed a highly commendable appearance but tackling the dirty work and doing it exceptionally well elmer relieved hard-pressed lab x-ray and operating room techs to perform their functions more efficiently he was vastly superior to the assistance of normal intelligence that Phelps had worked with men who were sloppy and had a bad attitude the story of elmer supports the argument made by many educators and psychologists that low aptitude of individuals can be productive in low stress non dangerous situations and this is an important point low aptitude men and women are not worthless people they are not subhumans they are capable of contributing to their fan and to our society in the workplace they are capable of being successful workers if they are placed in low stress situations with sympathetic supervisors and sympathetic co-workers they need to be in a cozy Haven a protected place a place that is far different from the military environment where sergeants are screaming at you and your fellow soldiers are rough and rowdy and the demands of daily life are extremely stressful so yes elemér and some other project 100,000 men did experience success in the Armed Forces but they were in a minority most of the men of project 100,000 suffered and some of them suffered enormous Lee and you may be thinking project 100,000 was so terrible surely we will never make this mistake again right well I have good news and bad news the good news in the early 1970s the military draft was ended thank goodness and project 100,000 was abolished thank goodness no more drafting of low IQ troops but now the bad news in the years since the draft ended leading up to the present day the Army and the Marine Corps have monthly recruiting quotas and if they fail to meet their quotas they are authorized to enlist recruits of low intelligence the Army and the Marine Corps have tried to avoid taking these individuals they don't really want them but sometimes they've had to induct them in order to fill the ranks the final chapter of my book is entitled the folly continues I give examples of low aptitude men who have been inducted in recent years especially in the war in Iraq and some of them lost their lives let me share one example during the war in Iraq the military had trouble getting enough men and women to fill the ranks so it lowered mental standards just as it had done in Vietnam in 2008 an army private named David Dietrich of Perry County Pennsylvania was the subject of a Newsweek magazine article entitled he never should have gone to Iraq before and during his army time he was considered slow in his thinking and he had trouble retaining information and basic training he couldn't hit targets on the rifle range even though he was given extra training one superior campaigned to have Dietrich sent home on grounds that he would pose a danger to himself and others if he were sent to be a to Iraq starts a Vietnam it's so much like Vietnam he would pose a danger to himself and others if he was sent to Iraq but the request was turned down by the Pentagon because there was a big push to get troops into the combat zone as soon as he arrived in Iraq he was assigned to act as a scout in an abandoned building where he was supposed to watch furtively from open windows a few minutes after he started his duty at one of the windows he was shot and killed instantly a few days ago I learned something else about this poor guy I learned that other soldiers in his outfit had called him by his nickname his nickname was Forrest Gump was Vietnam all over again now in fairness I should emphasize that the practice of accepting mentally limited soldiers and Marines today is nowhere near as widespread as it was during the Vietnam War but the fawley does continue I would like to close my remarks today by answering this question what can we learn from McNamara's folly for me the overriding lesson is that low IQ men should never be used in a war zone or in a dangerous area putting their lives at risk is cruel it's immoral and on a sheer practical level it degrades the effectiveness of war efforts it was wrong to use these men in Vietnam and it is wrong to use these men in the military today I firmly believe that the armed forces need and deserve the best and the brightest thank you

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Channel: Hamilton Gregory

Views: 929,139

Rating: 4.630578 out of 5

Keywords: McNamara's Folly, Vietnam War, McNamara's Morons, Project 100000, Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson, military draft, intellectual disability, low-IQ, Moron Corps, Vietnam veterans, soldiers, Marines, Vietnam, casualties, morons, stupid, draftees, death, Army, Marine Corps, McNamara's Boys, mental standards, induction, McNamara, Robert S. McNamara, Lyndon B. Johnson, Hamilton Gregory

Id: _J2VwFDV4-g

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 36min 28sec (2188 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2016

Reddit Comments

Otherwise known as McNamara’s morons or McNamara’s 100,000.

👍︎︎ 34 👤︎︎ u/HippityHopMath 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

The one's that make it out alive are the one that got shot in the buttocks and go on to play ping pong in china.

👍︎︎ 26 👤︎︎ u/Tronkfool 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

You make it sound like they stopped doing that.

👍︎︎ 16 👤︎︎ u/enfiel 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

Some got out of it by claiming bone spurs.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/maliciousorstupid 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

One of them got injured in Vietnam..gunshot to the buttocks. But, he saved the lives of 6 of his fellow men, including his lieutenant. He won the Medal of Honor.

Later he was a table tennis champ, shrimp fisherman, and rich investor

👍︎︎ 10 👤︎︎ u/TheRealBobbyC 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

I think I saw this in a movie once.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/Adhmad_Dubh 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

The thread title would be more informative if it mentioned which military and when this happened.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/NDaveT 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

canon fodder

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies

But people on the left told me IQ is not accurate and not legally binding so it's impossible to take it as an indicator.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/MurdochMurdoch88 📅︎︎ Nov 30 2018 🗫︎ replies