Throughout the American War in Vietnam the press was provided with daily briefings of military activity, but over time the press began to perceive the daily accounts with skepticism and as somewhat of a joke. The reported “body counts” were viewed as largely inflated, prompting the press service to commonly refer to the daily government spectacle as, the “five o'clock follies”. As the final briefing commenced in 1973, Army Major Jere Forbus sighed and concluded that, "We may not have been perfect, but we outlasted Fiddler on the Roof." Many in the press viewed the eight-year-old charade with far less humor, including Associated Press Saigon bureau chief, Richard Pyle, who called the briefings "the longest-playing tragic comedy in Southeast Asia's theater of the absurd."

PHOTOS: The images presented on these pages, depict just a handful of dead Viet Cong suspects I observed during my research in the National Archive. As I previously noted, the National Archive provides numerous depictions of dead Viet Cong suspects and the violent acts that they purportedly initiated. In my view, this helps to preserve the interpretation of the U.S. government, which unambiguously labels the VC as instigators and terrorists. By stringently focusing on the terrorist mindset of the VC, it also works to eradicate any intellectual value of their cause, making it easier to justify the simple solution of a “body count”, as the standard for success.