Talk:Vietnam War casualties

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[edit] Additional Detail

How do people feel about adding additional detail, breaking down casualties by year (like here http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html) or month, or geographical area, or presenting sums from major battles? Should that sort of thing be on this page or additional pages? Is going into excruciating detail (for example, attempting to list every single US soldier KIA) appropriate for wikipedia? Wsacul 17:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arrogant

I find it pretty arrogant that your casualty listing for Vietnam makes sure to point out where the U.S. may have killed civilians but you sure don’t want to point out how many S. Vietnamese were kill by the Vet con and Northern Vietnamese Army.

Example: (Bold font is the author issues with the categorization)

NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and the VC (Viet Cong) < No doubt that the U.S. is responisble for killing these murders.• ~900,000 killed and/or missing North Vietnamese civilians < And being these are NV civilians no doubt the U.S. did this too.• at least 500,000 killed by Allied bombings South Vietnamese Army • ~1,000,000 killed and/or missing South Vietnamese civilians • anywhere from 1,000,000 to 2,500,000 killed and/or died of starvation, wounds, disease, drought, friendly fire, atrocities etc. • > 100,000 killed or wounded by US ordnance since 1975 • 200,000 affected by US Agent Orange < So you find it a need to make sure to point out that these last two listings are U.S. Kills but who’s responsible for the set of numbers above. Beside the friendly fire did the S. Vietnamese do this to them selves? Well hell then why were they in a war with NVA. I’m you’re your attitude is that it goes with out saying, but it doesn’t you’ve just decided pointed out the U.S. instigated casualties to cast bad light on the nation. For instant the Agent Orange kills are most likily a exaggeration and whether they are or aren’t you point them out in blatant disregard for the reason it was used to make it look like the U.S. just gassed them to gas them. In fact your main article on Nam doesn’t point out the Agent Orange use at all except for the “Social Attitudes and Treatment of Veterans” (God fobid you talk about the liberal hippies who spit on those soldiers). You might want to talk about those instances of AO use if your going to point them out as being a reason for some of the dead. They used the Agent too wipe out over run areas and most likely killed twice as many of the enemy on those instances. I’m not saying that it not sad what happen I’m just saying you skewing a fact intentionally by not giving all the information anywhere eles. Not to mention that fact that in the main article under the Vietnam search you state that you’re using numbers from a government that won the Southern half. Yes, I’m sure those numbers aren’t skewed at all. Obviously the rest of the SVC death are not due to America or you would have pointed it out, so who then nice vague description. I’m just jumping the gun but I’m sure you’ll be sure and correct that to say, starvation, wounds, disease, drought, atrocities etc… by NVA and VC cutting of food, medicine and through attacks on the S. Vietnamese, and by friendly fire.

Just thought I’d help you clean that up.

There is some attempt to tally the North's pogroms against civilians here.[[1]] Mporter 09:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] attributing casualties

To improve the article, it would be nice to have as many deaths as possible attributed: i.e. how many civilians and how many combatants were killed by US, north vietnamese, etc. forces. Jens Nielsen 22:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Agreement with other articles

The figures, at least for US casualties, don't agree with those in the main Vietnam War article. The biggest discrepancy is wounded: 153,303 there, 128,000 here. Can anybody fix these? — MikeG (talk) 14:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] US Casualties

US casualties don't appear to be listed on this page. Why not?

[edit] refrences?

There are no refrences for this article.... and this is the sort of article needs them! please add some if you have time. Ahudson 16:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


122.104.135.222 (talk) 02:29, 5 May 2008 (UTC) is http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ a credible site.

although only numbers are being quotes, a quick look at the site will see it has significant bias.

could its numbers be found elsewhere?

122.104.135.222 (talk) 02:29, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What the Fuck?

Over one million Americans died in Vietnam? That number seems not only inaccurate but grossly inflated. I'm pretty sure that most historical accounts have the number of U.S. dead at around 60,000. I checked the casualty records at the archive and the list is around 58,193. I think the guy who wrote 1,000,000 must have added up the totals for all the different subsets, failing to realize each subset was just categorizing the same casualties in a different way.

[edit] High Count, Low Count

It seems to me that many of the discrepancies in VPA/VC casualties could be explained by differing chronological scopes for various estimates. The absurdly high figure of 1.1 million Communist deaths could very well be referring to every VPA and VC combatant killed from 1945 to 1989 - as I recall the press release in question is a very vague three-line French affair. For all I know ARVN troops are lumped in there too. It is doubtful that this figure refers specifically to the period of American involvement in Vietnam. Kensai Max 05:35, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I looked at a document purporting to be the Agence France Presse piece the other day and it was remarkably scrappy. No source for the figures at all. Not at all what I'd expect from a news agency of their calibre. One other thing that struck me was that the combined total of dead and wounded for each side is virually identical. I suppose this reflects better casevac, treatment etc in the south. ROGER TALK 09:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] United States Armed Forces

The U.S. section says there were "58,209 KIA and other dead", but I don't see that number in the given source. Also, the MIA link appears to be dead now. Superm401 - Talk 09:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Individuals

Should we perhaps try to list every individual casualtie we can as well? --67.162.31.148 (talk) 23:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)