Word: dien
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...membership including French, Chinese, Russian, Philippine, U.S. and Indo-Chinese representatives, to prepare the country for independence. But the idea died with F.D.R. The French moved back into Indo-China, and with monumental lack of foresight, immediately reimposed the same old colonial order. Thus was the stage set for Dien-bienphu, partition and the present war. Historian Schlesinger concedes with disarming candor that history is a terribly "tricky" tool for predicting the future. In the long run, he writes, history "can answer questions, after a fashion"-but as the late economist John Maynard Keynes once said, "in the long...
...pilots, the missions were as routine as any ever are in the face of North Viet Nam's formidable air-defense system. The targets: the Yen Vien railroad center northeast of the capital, and Van Dien, a major vehicle-repair depot known in Pentagon parlance as the "secondhand-car lot," with a capacity of some 500 trucks. Both had been hit for the first time on Dec. 2; and both were worth a second try, particularly Yen Vien, the country's largest rail choke point, handling one-third of the nation's military traffic...
Helping Ho. Tri Quang is his adopted name, and it means "brilliant mind." He was born Pham Bong on Dec. 31, 1923, in Diem Dien, a village in central Viet Nam now under Hanoi's rule. One of three sons of a well-to-do farmer, he was sent at the age of 13 to the Bao Quoc pagoda in Hué to train for monkhood. Wild and fond of practical jokes at first, he was expelled, then given a second chance. He matured into a student with a photographic memory and a searching intellect. His teacher at Bao Quoc, Thich...
...ventured that Hanoi's leaders expect domestic dissent and international disapproval to sap America's will to fight the far-off war. "They have not forgotten that the Viet Minh won more in Paris than in Dien Bien Phu, and believe that the Viet Cong may be as fortunate in Washington." In summary, he maintained that present U.S. strategy is "the best that has been suggested. Certainly it is not without risks-but little of value in this world...
Straight-Shooters. At the heart of Ho's complex political equation is Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, 52, the stocky, slab-cheeked victor of Dien-bienphu and the man who runs Ho's considerable military establishment. Giap is tentatively pro-Moscow in his political orientation, but for a Communist general, he is basically apolitical. Unswervingly loyal to Ho, Giap has honed North Viet Nam's 250,000-man army into one of Asia's toughest military units. Though short on transportation and heavy artillery, Giap's men are tautly disciplined and almost overweeningly proud. Some...