Nation: Bombs, Bottlenecks & Baloney

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On the periphery of the moral and philosophical debate about Viet Nam, a hot little skirmish flared last week over the Administration's practical prosecution of the war.

It began quietly enough when House Republican Leader Gerald Ford gave reporters a run-of-the-mimeograph release charging that the U.S. was "running short of bombs despite all the billions we have voted for defense" and that this clearly showed "shocking mismanagement" by the Defense Department. Ford also accused the Administration of creating a "national scandal" by allowing a shipping backup to slow materiel deliveries to U.S. troops in Viet Nam.

Ford's attack attracted little public attention until newsmen asked Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen what he thought about it. Dirksen, who had been en route to Mexico City with the President when Ford made his charges, made no attempt to hide his Olympian disapproval. "You don't," he said acerbically, "demean the Chief Magistrate of your country at a time like this when the war is on. You stand up to be counted." Dirksen subsequently tried to minimize his differences with Ford.

However, like most fellow Republicans, Dirksen has consistently defended the Administration's conduct of the war-while planning to emphasize as a campaign issue Democratic dissent and disarray over Viet Nam. Resorting to semantics, Dirksen allowed: "He uses the word mismanagement. I thought perhaps 'misjudgment' might be a better term."

Statistical Barrage. "Baloney" was Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's word for it. In an adroit appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, McNamara dismissed Ford's charges as "completely misleading." He also refuted a New York Times story quoting unidentified sources in Saigon as saying that U.S. air raids had been curtailed because of a lack of bombs and bomb parts.

Characteristically unleashing a barrage of statistics, McNamara said that the U.S. has an "inventory" of 331,000 tons of conventional bombs, of which 61,000 tons are in Southeast Asia. Last month some 50,000 tons—25% more than originally planned—were dropped in 4,700 sorties. The Pentagon plans to use 638,000 tons of bombs in Viet Nam in 1966 alone, 40% of the amount used against Germany in Africa and Europe from mid-1942 until the end of World War II and 91% of the total dropped in the entire 37-month Korean War. The recent reduction in bombing runs, McNamara pointed out, occurred because "political disorders" in Saigon slowed ground operations throughout South Viet Nam. Nevertheless, he said, there would certainly be "an increase in the extent and intensity of the conflict" in coming weeks.