McNamara’s Misfits: That Time the US Military Used the Mentally Disabled as Cannon Fodder
More than 300,000 low-IQ soldiers were sent to the front lines of Vietnam in a sick experiment dreamed up by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara
It was October 1966. The United States military was sinking into the quagmire of the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson occupied the presidency, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara paced the halls of the Pentagon.
On McNamara’s mind was a disturbing development: the Soviet Union had just confirmed what they already expected. In an article published on October 2nd in Red Star, a Soviet military newspaper, they admitted to providing military and economic support for the North Vietnamese. Although the war was already escalating out of control after events like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, this revelation changed everything. It was now an offshoot of the Cold War. It would be bigger, bloodier, and much more important in the ideological, geopolitical standoff between the two superpowers. McNamara knew he needed more soldiers.
