Hello all. First time poster here. As such, I'll stay away from the more potentially controversial subtopics here and go with something more concrete: the bit about 'body counts' on the Vietnam Myth website. http://www.rjsmith.com/war_myth.html#bodies
If I'm remembering right, We Were Soldiers Once... And Young (the book, not the film) includes some discussion of body counts. Now, the author (Lt. Col. Moore) did NOT inflate body counts. However, he DID say that upon combining the body count reports of his subordinates he cut a certain percentage off the top before repeating them up the chain of command, because (again, IIRC) the numbers he was getting from his subordinates were themselves inflated. This does NOT mean those subordinates were deliberatly making stuff up, but it does suggest that inflation was a problem. If anyone knows/can remember why Lt. Col. Moore believed those initial numbers to be too high, it would help clarify things a bit, but the bottom line for me is that the colonel's account suggests this particulary 'myth' has more grounding in reality than the RJSmith website gives it credit for.
Now, this would seem to contradict what the RJSmith website says about the NVA suffering more KIAs than the US itself estimated. However, it may be that the website is misinterpreting the NVA statement to Agence France. According to RJSmith "the Communists declared, in an official press release to Agence France, that we had actually killed 1.1 million NVA soldiers" (emphasis added). I can't find the original Agence France statement (if anyone else can find a link, I'd be interested in reading it), but according to a different website (http://www.nam-vet.net/book1_11.html), the Agence France statement says (in a "Loose translation") that "Military casualties were 1.1 million killed and 600,000 wounded and an additional estimated 666,000 Viet cong killed in 21 years of war" (again, emphasis added). In other words, the 1.1. million KIA would be the result of both the French and American military campaigns, meaning the US-contributed total would be substantially below 1.1 million (though probably still a strong majority).
So, where does all this leave us? If the second interpretation of the Agence France statement is correct, then Lt. Col. Moore's concerns about body count inflation seem justified, which in turn suggests that inflated body counts were NOT a myth (though it may still be a myth to attribute inflation to deliberate intent). On the other hand, if the RJSmith website is correct, then we've got a bit of a contradication between Lt. Col. Moore's concern and the final NVA KIA total; I don't know how one would resolve that.
Anyway, if anyone could clarify this entire situation, I'd be interested in learning more.