This is not a well-known story. Congress covered it up at the time. This was bipartisan murder.
The military could not meet its quotas. The draft was failing. Volunteers could not fill the ranks. In response, Robert McNamara devised a solution: draft low-IQ men who could not read or write. The military drafted over 300,000 of them. Over 10% of the men who died in Vietnam could not read their own dog tags. They died at rates three times higher than IQ 85+ troops.
Meanwhile, back in America, the keg parties went on.
To justify this program, McNamara told the public that military training would raise their IQ’s. How? By the use of videotapes. Yes, he actually said this. Those who know about this technology’s history will see the ludicrousness of the claim. The machines were costly and unknown to the general public in the 1960’s. The military did not use these machines to train low-IQ men in boot camp. In any case, videotape lessons do not raise people’s IQ’s.
Continue reading “McNamara’s Martyrs: Low-IQ Substitutes for College Men With Deferments”