Word: diem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...months ago that a 73-year-old Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc sat down in the middle of a Saigon street and, drenched in five gallons of gasoline, calmly set himself afire with a cigarette lighter to dramatize Buddhist opposition to the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem. It was this calculated grisly act of propaganda?and Diem's harsh countermeasures?that eventually led the U.S. to withdraw support from Diem, permitting his overthrow and murder. At the time, the West had great sympathy for South Viet Nam's Buddhists. Now the atmosphere is different. There is no longer...
...Well, the Buddhists vaguely ex plained, Huong's government, which is made up mostly of nonpolitical civil servants, is "not revolutionary" and contains "vestiges of the Diem regime." Saigon's draft-exempt students and microscopic "political parties," with the Buddhists' tacit approval, began holding meetings and demanded a government reshuffle. Huong refused, explaining: "They all want my job. If I had satisfied all their demands, my Cabinet would have numbered over a hundred." Then he Buddhists' appealed political to the bureau, head Thich of the Tarn Chau, and reported, "It was like talking to a deaf...
...McNamara must have known, all this begged the fact that the last previous civilian South Viet Nam government, that of Ngo Dinh Diem, was overthrown by a military junta with at least the tacit connivance of the U.S., that the new government is the shakiest anywhere in the world, that militarily the South Viet Nam war has been going from worse to worst, and that any expression of optimism was pure whistling in the dark...
United States troops were first sent to Vietnam in 1961 to bolster the crumbling regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and to serve as advisors in the war against the Viet Cong. Since then American commitment in South Vietnam has steadily increased...
Although United States involvement has increased, the development of the political and military situation in Vietnam leaves much to be desired. In the past year Saigon has been ruled by Diem, Minh, Khanh, and now Tran Van Huong. The "strategic hamlet" program has been a failure; since January over 1000 government officials have been kidnaped or assassinated by the Viet Cong; battles with the Viet Cong have been larger than ever: and Viet Cong fire-power, especially against aircraft, has become more effective every month...