Robert McNamara Begins To Doubt His Strategy Of "Body Count" Belligerence In Vietnam

My Lai Massacre 

Victims included old men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

The Pentagon Papers 
Volume 4
Chapter I, "The Air War in North Vietnam, 1965-1968," pp. 1-276.
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1971)

"The primary costs of course are US lives: The air campaign against heavily defended areas costs us one pilot in every 40 sorties. In addition, an important but hard-to-measure cost is domestic and world opinion: There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States--especially if the damage to North Vietnam is complete enough to be "successful.""

NPR: Ken Burns And Lynn Novick Discuss "The Vietnam War"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/09/npr-ken-burns-and-lynn-novick-discuss.html

Vietnam: "The More We Won, The More We Lost." "Shoot Anything That Moves."

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/vietnam-more-we-won-more-we-lost-shoot.html

Fifty Years Ago Martin Luther King Jr. Came Out Against The Vietnam War
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/04/fifty-years-ago-martin-luther-king-jr.html

Smothers Brothers' Interview Of Dr. Benjamin Spock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOnY1kKd8Ms