Word: cong
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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PACIFICATION. As of the end of October, this year, 92% of South Viet Nam's 17,424,900 people live in "relatively secure" areas v. 42% in January 1968; at the same time, the proportion of hamlets under Viet Cong control has dropped from 30% to 3.2% . The 92% figure includes "A" hamlets, where the V.C. apparatus has been eliminated; "B" hamlets, where the V.C. threat has been largely neutralized; and "C" hamlets, which are subject only to infrequent V.C. harassment. Some students of the war have long questioned the accuracy and significance of pacification statistics...
Despite the rules, Americans have committed a disturbing number of atrocities in Viet Nam-and prosecution has often been prompt. In the I Corps area last year, for example, seven Marines summarily hanged a Viet Cong suspect and shot two others to death. At a court-martial, one defense lawyer argued that his client had gone through "hell" after seeing Marine bodies "burned and tortured, some with their testicles cut off." Nevertheless, all seven Marines were convicted and imprisoned, one for life...
...argue that the Army hopes to convict the lowest-ranking officer who is charged in the case. All the men under him might then try to get off by claiming that they were simply following his orders, which, at the time, seemed necessary and proper in a heavily Viet Cong area...
Washington's top man in Cambodia is Career Diplomat Lloyd Rives, 47, whose last station was Burundi. A mere charge d'affaires in a country where even the Viet Cong have a full-fledged "ambassador," Rives lives in a three-story rented house near the brown Bassac River, within sight of grazing elephants. His bed, one of the few pieces of furniture in the place, was donated by the landlady. Bachelor Rives and his diplomatic staff of two (a secretary and a communications expert) work in a makeshift office in the servants' quarters, using packing cases...
...considered the U.S. presence too big for comfort. It had grown to more than 200 people and an aid budget of $30 million a year. Nowadays, Sihanouk's chief fear is that a Communist victory in Viet Nam might encourage the 40,000 uninvited North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops who now use Cambodia as a sanctuary to stay on indefinitely. To counterbalance that threat, Sihanouk began warming to Washington a year...