Word: defend
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Accords of January 1973 now seemed to have lost the ability and will to resist; its defenses simply melted away before North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. The Communists had not yet penetrated the vital Saigon region, and there was still hope that the government would be able to defend the capital. But many Viet Nam experts, who two weeks ago were predicting only limited losses for Saigon during the current dry season, now could not entirely discount the chance that the Communist momentum would carry them to total military victory in a matter of weeks...
Even if South Viet Nam survives, at best it will be in truncated form, having shrunk to the provinces around Saigon and the Mekong Delta. Even so, it was abundantly clear that Thieu's decision two weeks ago to abandon some outlying hard-to-defend provinces to the Communists had started a rout of his forces...
...action committee sponsors favored an overthrow of Thieu; indeed, they seemed to believe that a coup would only further lessen public confidence in the government. But the conservative opposition argued that South Viet Nam now needs a strong, broadly representative, anti-Communist movement while reorganizing the army to defend a smaller perimeter around Saigon and part of the rice-rich Mekong Delta. "The present atmosphere of panic is like China in 1949," said one of the country's most respected political leaders. "We can no longer count on the American forces, and we must act quickly to save ourselves...
...came a growing hatred and confusion that are new even to this war. Gradually the city realized that it might not be safe after all, that the war was going much worse than anyone had feared. The news of the fall of Hue, which everybody expected the government to defend, came as a severe shock. Equally frightening, the dusty buses pathetically crowded with refugees were no longer coming in only from the northern provinces; they were arriving from the south as well, bringing with them the terrible news that the escape route down the coast was cut. Danang was sealed...
...decides to hang on, it is because he hopes his forces can defend Phnom-Penh for three more months, until the wet season impedes the insurgents' drive. With an improved military situation, the President would expect political pressures to diminish. On the other hand, if he finally makes up his mind to leave, it may in no small measure be due to Cambodia's students. Last week, as rumors swept the capital that time had run out for the President and that a coup was imminent, leaders of the Association of Students of the Khmer Republic, which claims...