YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsBodies  Body Count Proved to Be
a False Prophet : Tactics: It was discarded after Vietnam War.
Military people now realize that quantifying victory is far more
complex.  ON WAR: One in a series of analyses by Col. Harry G.
Summers Jr. (Ret.), military specialist  February 09, 1991|HARRY
G. SUMMERS Jr.  Body count. That's one of the more grisly
aspects of the Vietnam War that the U.S. military can't seem to
shed, no matter how hard it tries.   But still the reporters
persist. "Why is he so adamant?" a war correspondent asked me
this week in a call from the Gulf. "Is he trying to hide
something? Is he refusing to tell us how many Iraqi soldiers
have been killed for fear of stirring up anti-war sentiment at
home?"  Conspiracy is not the answer. Gen. Schwarzkopf does not
know, and BDA (bomb damage assessment) cannot tell him with any
degree of precision how many Iraqi bodies are piled up in the
trenches.  It is still true, as the great Prussian military
theorist Karl von Clausewit