Word: diem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Viet Cong. Taylor, who takes over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff next month, last visited Viet Nam a year ago; from that trip came the stepped-up program of U.S. military and economic aid to the embattled nation. Last week, in talks with President Ngo Binh Diem and General Paul Harkins, boss of U.S. forces in Viet Nam, hardbitten Maxwell Taylor sought to assess the results. His conclusion: "We are making progress...
Politically, despite the pleadings of U.S. officials-and rumbles of discontent from his opponents-Diem is in no mood to relax his authoritarian rule. Economically, the war has taken a heavy toll. The Viet Cong have cut off rice shipments from the interior and rubber production is down sharply. Gold and foreign exchange reserves have dipped from $222 million in 1960 to $158 million, and export earnings will drop this year from $70 million to $55 million. Nearly $2.5 billion in U.S. aid has only made South Viet Nam more dependent on-and more critical of-its friends...
This time field commanders were in complete control of the operation, without the usual interference from President Ngo Dinh Diem's palace in Saigon. Provincial chiefs, who sometimes acted independently of the army, were under orders to cooperate with the operation's commanders. And. instead of operating from a set battle plan mapped out in Saigon, the mission was kept flexible and aggressive with day-to-day, on-the-spot planning on the basis of field intelligence. Flexibility paid off. In the first eleven days of the operation, government forces killed 200 Viet Cong troops, captured 45 more...
Training Program. But the Viet Cong overplayed their hand. They took rice and livestock from the montagnards in order to feed their guerrillas, used terror tactics against the more recalcitrant mountain villages. Tens of thousands of montagnards fled to government-held territory. Prodded by the U.S., President Ngo Dinh Diem's government has begun an attempt to win the montagnards over with a resettlement program. Even more important, U.S. military advisers have started a program to arm and train montagnards, who then are sent back into the hills to defend their villages and to keep the surrounding territory...
...people of Vietnam are not satisfied with the rule of Diem and therefore they do not resist the guerilla tactics of the Vietcong. Soliven warned that "You can pour money into South East Asia but if the people are not in favor of the government, money will be of no use in resisting the communists." The United States has been content to send billions of dollars to Vietnam, without gaining the loyalty of the people, he claimed...