Word: diem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cable focused attention on a longtime dispute in Washington over policy toward South Viet Nam. The Pentagon is convinced that the U.S.-financed war ($1,500,000 daily, 14,000 military advisers) is being won. On that basis, the military believes that any attempt to overthrow the Diem government, no matter how obnoxious it might seem, would only send more U.S. blood (over 100 Americans have lost their lives in the war) and money down the drain. Thus the Pentagon's position has been: fight against the Communists, not against the Diem regime...
...direct opposition to this is a small but determined core of State Department liberals, known around Washington as the "Gung Ho Boys," who sometimes seem more interested in over throwing the heavy-handed Diem regime than in pushing the war against the Viet Cong. Among the leaders of the State Department clique is Roger Hilsman, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. His friends at the State Department admire him as an independent thinker; his Pentagon critics have dubbed him "the field marshal" because, they say, he tries to run the whole military-political war in Viet
...Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and General Paul Harkins, commander of the 14,000-man U.S. military mission, McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plunged into their assignment: to find out whether the war on the Communists has been hurt by the Diem regime's barefisted handling of dissident Buddhists. In a windowless, soundproofed room of Saigon's cream stucco...
...village of Montagnard tribesmen that had been nearly destroyed by the Viet Cong last January; surrounded by goats, pigs, chickens and barebreasted women, the Defense Secretary observed the villagers voting in the national election being held that day, which was carefully arranged to sweep back into office a new Diem-ruled National Assembly. Then the Secretary, Taylor and Ambassador Lodge headed south into the Communistinfested Mekong Delta, where the war has always been an uphill struggle, and where the Reds have recently increased activity. As they were being briefed at Camau, gunfire was audible on the village outskirts-normal "background...
...week's end it was announced that they would see President Diem at his office at Saigon's Gia Long Palace, later meet him and others in the government at a black-tie dinner. Back in the U.S., President Kennedy was waiting for the answers...