Word: combative
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...never met. Moreover, at the time of Lodge's 1964 leavetaking, there were 16,000 U.S. servicemen in Viet Nam, restricted to an advisory role and forbidden to carry the war to North Viet Nam. Today, American troops total 67,000, many of them are operating in combat units, and U.S. planes daily attack the North...
...would approve at least a small annual quota of skilled Asians. Apart from the economic strain, the government is all too aware of the strategic perils of underpopulation. With 3,000 fighting men in Malaysia (see story above) and a battalion in Viet Nam, half of Australia's combat-ready forces are already tied down in the widening struggle for Southeast Asia. It is a sphere where Australia has only recently begun to extend its economic and political influence. As a noncolonial nation, it is now accepted even by Indonesia as a legitimate Asian presence...
...corruption. A huge, incalculable bite from Washington's $1 billion foreign-aid program is taken each year by government and military officials. U.S. refrigerators and air conditioners meant for hospitals end up in generals' homes; troop commanders collect the "phantom pay" of soldiers whose deaths in combat go unreported to Saigon. For $675, a well-to-do youth can buy an Interior Ministry "diploma" that certifies him as a government spy, thus exempting him from army service. A trick currently in favor with provincial chiefs is to blow up a provincial bridge, blame the Viet Cong...
...surprised by a determined enemy. For all that, Viet Nam has become a veritable jungle proving ground for new weapons and novel equipment, much of it designed specifically for the kind of war the U.S. must fight there. Some of the armament has already been thrown into combat, some is undergoing advanced testing, some is just off the drawing board...
...cigarettes, expropriating for the purpose a page from the professor's miniature volume of poems by Leopardi, the professor watches a classic poem burn, then resignedly selects for his own smoke "a minor work." Both men understate their roles in virtuoso style, whether locked in ideological combat or coping with a nubile vagrant (Stefania Sandrelli) who tramps the countryside like a one-girl emporium-stealing clothes, swapping souvenirs, and cheekily symbolizing the instinct for survival that thrives in all political climates...