They used statistics to convince themselves that they were winning. They claimed the percentage of the South Vietnamese population under control of the Viet Cong guerrillas had fallen from 60 percent to 40 percent. It was true, too—but only because U.S. bombing and search-and-destroy raids had depopulated the countryside. To this way of looking at the world, there was no difference between winning people’s allegiance and turning them into refugees.
