FORECASTS FURTHER ESCALATION
In testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate April 20, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara forecast further escalation of the war in Vietnam. "I anticipate an increase
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in the extent and intensity of the conflict," he told the senators.
Under questioning, he revealed that the war is now costing the U.S. $12,000,000,000 a year. This averages out to almost $35,000,000 a day, or about thirty-five times the figure given up to now by administration spokesmen!
McNamara also revealed that there are now 245,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, making a total of "325,000 men assigned to combat operations in Southeast Asia."
In escalating the war to its present height, the Johnson administration has achieved other grim records. Air support of ground operations in Vietnam "is three times the level of support that we had in World War II."
The Pentagon spokesman with the computer brain and gas-chamber heart aiso proudly announced that 50,000 tons of bombs were dropped in Vietnam in March compared with an average of 48,000 tons a month in Europe and Africa combined in World War II and an average of 17,500 tons a month during the thirty-seven months of the. Korean War, which was sufficient to literally obliterate virtually. every village and hamlet in that. theater of American largess.
McNamara, who must now be listed as one of the greatest war criminals of all time, expressed his pride in the United States. "No other nation in history has ever been so strong," he said. As | proof he cited America's capacity to carry "such great military strength with so little burden on its society." Up to. now, this top adviser and administrator in the Johnson administration pointed out, the government has not called up reserve forces, has not diverted scarce materials from civilian use , nor . imposed wage or price con-~ trols.
In addition, McNamara boasted that the U.S. has a stockpile. of 331,000 tons of conventional bombs, of which 102,000 tons are stored in the U.S., 61,000 tons in Southeast Asia, and about "four days stock" in Vietnam. [On top of this, McNamara's department announced April 23 that it had "reacquired" 18,000 bombs from its allies, most of them 500-pounders. }.
McNamara's aggressive approach apparently led the senators to handle him with kid gloves. Even Senator Morse appeared quite meek in face of the bomb-rattling head of the. Pentagon.
Yet the senators had just returned from their annual Easter fence-mending visit to their own states, arriving back in Washington with troubled faces. The war in Vietnam and inflation at home have become top issues among the voters. The conservative Republican Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa plaintively told McNamara that "most of us got into a hornet's nest over what's happening. It's rather difficult for us to give answers."
McNamara listened politely but seemed to be hearing different sounds than this faint echo of the voices of the American people.
3.
RUSSELL