Inside the Pentagon's shameful effort to draft mentally disabled men to fight in Vietnam
In 1967, a young man named Johnny Gupton was drafted into the Army to fight in Vietnam. Gupton didn’t know how to read or write; he didn’t even know what state he was from. He had never heard of Vietnam. When a fellow soldier questioned a noncommissioned officer (NCO) about how someone with such an obvious mental disability could join the Army, the NCO responded, “Ehh, he’s one of McNamara’s Morons.”
This is what soldiers like Gupton were known as throughout the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War era. In 1967, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lowered military recruiting standards as part of a program called Project 100,000. Its goal, as the name suggests, was to recruit 100,000 men each year who were otherwise mentally, physically or psychologically underqualified for service. These men all had IQs below 91, and nearly half had IQs below 71. From the Project’s launch in 1966, through its termination in 1971, it allowed 354,000 previously ineligible men into the military. Of these, 5,478 died in combat and 20,270 were wounded.
These men were aggressively recruited and pushed through training without having met even the bare minimum of standards set for them. They were sent into combat in large numbers and many died. They were promised greater benefits and opportunities as an incentive to join the military, but those who returned alive came home to broken promises and were abandoned by the government. It’s a largely forgotten and shameful chapter in American history.
https://taskandpurpose.com/history/project-100000-vietnam/
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