Precise figures and trends are not known. The Pentagon has never seen the need to make the kind of estimates of civilians killed in the way as they have for the number of enemy soldiers who die. and are computed each week. The only estimates that we do have come from sources outside of the executive branch. such as the Senate Subcommittee on Refugees. The evidence suggests that as the overall bomb tonnage over South Vietnam has decreased in the past 2 years. civilian casualties may be reduced from the peak of the war in 1968. Yet. as the bombing has begun in earnest in Cambodia since early 1970 and has significantly intensified in Laos since the beginning of 1969. civilian casualties in those countries have become significantly intensified. Estimates placed the number of refugees in Laos during June of this year at 315.000. or more than 10 percent of the entire population of the country. This amounts to an increase of 240 percent since 1969. And in Cambodia. the refugee toll since April 1970 is believed to be about 1.5 million people. When the total tragic toll of this wars continuing human cost is taken. we find that the suffering for the people of Indochina is not winding down at all. In fact. it can be argued that the overall suffering of the warthose killed. wounded. and made refugeeshas actually been rising this year compared to last. During the time that we have been "ending the war." the human suffering it is causing. while somewhat less intense within South Vietnam. has been tragically magnified throughout Laos and Cambodia in ways unknown during the Johnson years of the war. The human toll of the wars suffering has always been most heavily inflicted by the bombs that have fallen on Indochina.
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Refugees refugee refugeeshas refugees