Word: buildups
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...third of the country's population, the rice basket for half of its food-and the Viet Cong's prime source of men, money and supplies. The Communists very nearly seized it all in the grim months of late 1964 and early 1965 before the U.S. buildup. District towns were overrun, scores of outposts captured and destroyed, and government troops driven into the dubious safety of large towns. Huge tracts of Delta land fell under Viet Cong sway...
...more than its worldwide losses in wartime 1942. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recently ordered 280 new fighters at a cost of $700 million, and is pressing ahead with a program that will have increased U.S. troop-and-supply airlift capability by 1,000% between 1961 and 1971. The military buildup announced by the President 16 months ago has boosted armed-forces strength by a net of more than half a million men (present total: 3,228,377), affecting every aspect of logistics...
...engage a U.S. unit headon. The result was not only the war's bloodiest battle and a stunning defeat for the Communists, who suffered 2,000 dead, but the beginning of a new phase in the war. Since then, despite heavy bombing of the North and a steady buildup of U.S. troops to interdict the southward flow of troops, infiltration has continued unabated, providing the chief source of new Communist manpower to keep the war going...
THROUGHOUT the course of the U.S. buildup in Viet Nam that now totals 350,000 men, there has been remarkably little disagreement between the American command in Saigon and Commander in Chief Lyndon Johnson and his officials in Washington. One excellent reason for this is that all along Johnson has promised General William Westmoreland that whatever manpower reinforcements the general needed in the field, he would get. So far, the promise has been fulfilled: some 200,000 men will have disembarked in South Viet Nam in 1966 alone, bringing the year-end total of American troop strength in the field...
Those in Washington now arguing against a buildup to the 750,000 level do not fault Saigon's reasoning. Rather they insist that the fragile South Vietnamese economy, already inflation-plagued, cannot absorb so massive an additional infusion of Americans. "It would be like putting 2,000,000 men in West Germany," says one Defense Department official. What is more, and far more disturbing, is that without calling up the reserves or increasing draft levels, the U.S. military simply does not have that many men available for Viet Nam duty. And there, for the moment, rests the debate, which...