Word: dienbienphu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...psychological benefit of a "visible victory." According to this theory, Hanoi and the Viet Cong have decided not to settle for a unilateral American withdrawal, which the world might interpret as simply a political decision made by the White House. Instead, the Communists want a tangible triumph, a la Dienbienphu, which they can hold up as their...
...Joint Chiefs of Staff were adamant in their opposition: General Wheeler called McNamara's proposal "an aerial Dienbienphu." McNamara's disenchantment grew; by May 1967 he was advocating a political settlement in Viet Nam that would include non-Communist members of the National Liberation Front. A month after McNamara's resignation as Defense Secretary, President Johnson withdrew from the presidential race and ordered a partial bombing halt along the lines that McNamara had suggested earlier. TET AFTERMATH. In a secret report to President Johnson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Wheeler presented a more pessimistic assessment...
...when the U.S., in the shaky days after Tet, began pressuring the cocky pilot-politician to maintain at least a semblance of harmony with Thieu. But plainly Ky considers himself grounded no longer. In recent weeks, he has opened up on corruption ("beyond control"), on the Laotian operation ("our Dienbienphu"), on Vietnamization (Saigon's U.S.-supplied warplanes are suitable only "for women"). Richard Nixon's withdrawal program? Only last fall, Ky had been scoffing that a fixed pullout date "doesn't make any sense," but last week he called for total U.S. withdrawal...
...measured by counting bodies. South Vietnamese troops may well be doing better than their critics will ever willingly concede, but faked body counts and phony pacification figures are not the way to prove it. The North Vietnamese sustained three times as many casualties as the French at Dienbienphu. As a former U.S. adviser in Viet Nam notes, it is patently absurd to suppose that, "when the South Vietnamese are chasing each other aboard a helicopter to get off a hill, they are going to stop everything to say, 'And incidentally, sir, exactly 1,250 of the enemy lie dead...
...crashed in flames. All were killed. The urbane, Paris-born Sully, 43, was a bon vivant with a penchant for tailored shirts and vintage wine. He first came to Indochina in the mid-1940s, and, as a combat correspondent for TIME, was one of the last newsmen to leave Dienbienphu before it fell in 1954. He was the 34th journalist to be killed in Indochina since 1965 (another 17 are missing...