THE NO BOOTS ON THE GROUND POLICY In January 1955 American advisors arrived in Saigon to help train the South Vietnamese army. From 1955 through 1960 the United States had between 750 and 1500 military advisors helping the South Vietnamese government. On May 11, 1961 President Kennedy approved sending 400 Special Forces and an additional 100 military advisors to South Vietnam. By December 1961 there were 3205 military advisors on the ground supported by $65 million in military aid and $136 million in economic aid. At a news conference on February 14, 1962 President Kennedy said: “The training missions we have [in South Vietnam] have been instructed that if they are fired upon, they are, of course, to fire back, but we have not sent combat troops in [the] generally understood sense of the word.” By December 1962 there were 11,300 military personnel on the ground in South Vietnam. By 1963 the number of U.S. military advisors in that country was 16,000. By 1968 there were 536,100 American troops in Vietnam. The rest is history. In early June 2014, 300 advisors were sent to Iraq to assess the condition of the Iraqi army. On August 12, 2014, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that 130 additional advisors were being sent to Iraq’s Kurdish region. They joined 90 advisors already in Baghdad and 160 advisors working with Iraqi security forces in Erbil and Baghdad. In early September President Obama ordered another 475 troops to be sent to Iraq. By the end of September there were approximately 1500 U.S. military advisors in Iraq. On November 7, 2014 it was reported that the president authorized the deployment of 1500 additional troops to Iraq. With that deployment the total number of U.S. troops deployed in Iraq will be 3000. That is 205 fewer than were in Vietnam in December 1961.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 20:37:08 +0000
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