Word: cambodians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...time of the allied assault, the Communists were involved in a conflict with the six-week-old Phnom-Penh government of Premier Lon Nol, which had overthrown Prince Norodom Sihanouk on March 18 and had ordered all North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops to give up their Cambodian sanctuaries and leave the country. Moving westward so as to put pressure on Lon Nol not to interfere with their refuges and their supply lines, the Communists started seizing territory on the way to the Mekong River. In effect, they turned their backs on South Viet Nam; as Secretary of Defense Melvin...
...that limited score, the Cambodian venture was indeed a success. In eight weeks of concentrated scrounging, U.S. troops hauled off or destroyed mountains of painstakingly hidden Communist supplies. Estimates of the haul range up to 50% of the Communists' entire stockpile in eastern Cambodia...
...quickly became clear, however, that the major results of the Cambodian forays could not be weighed and measured so precisely. Their impact has yet to be fully assessed, but they raise some fateful questions...
...invasion precipitate permanent warfare on Cambodian soil? North Vietnamese and Viet Cong plans in Cambodia, beyond their aim of regaining use of the sanctuaries, are still far from clear. The U.S. raids obviously weakened the 40,000 Communist troops in Cambodia, but not enough to keep them from placing the Lon Nol government "in a very difficult position," as the U.S. chargé d'affaires in Phnom-Penh, Lloyd M. Rives, puts it mildly. The Communist rampages through Cambodia's towns that began before the U.S. moved against the sanctuaries constituted open aggression against a neutral state. Unfortunately...
...bargaining with Thailand to supply men at U.S. expense, and would like to encourage an all-Asia defense effort. One knowledgeable observer says that Washington plans to use "everything up to the introduction of ground combat troops." Last week, after U.S. bombers were reported flying in support of Cambodian army missions, Secretary of State William Rogers admitted that some of the continuing U.S. interdiction raids in Cambodia might be of "direct benefit" to the Cambodian army, even though their real purpose was to "protect Americans in South Viet...