Heres some more good reading. I cant say one way or the other whats true and whats false about this stuff but its safe to say that gixer is entitled to formulate and declare his opinion with the caveat that it is formulated on information that may be either true or false. To each his own.
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Charge: Airpower was an indiscriminate weapon that killed excessive numbers of Vietnamese civilians.
Response: Guenter Lewy has provided the most authoritative statistics on casualties in the Vietnam War--although he himself admits these numbers are estimates. He states that 250,000 South Vietnamese civilians were killed in the fighting, with another 39,000 assassinated by the Viet Cong. Breaking down the casualties by cause is difficult, but based on those civilians admitted to hospitals between 1967 and 1970, Lewy estimates that 67 percent of all injuries resulted from mines, mortars, guns, and grenades. The other 33 percent were injured by shelling or bombing. If these percentages are used for the entire war, and if we assume that the number of those injured by shelling or bombing are equal (Lewy doesn't break this category down), and if we assume that those killed met their fates in the same percentages as did those who were wounded--and all of those are big ifs--then of the 587,000 Vietnamese civilians, both north and south, that Lewy states were killed during the war, around 147,000 (25 percent) died from air attacks. The other 75 percent, more than 440,000 people, were killed by ground or naval action.
