Word: firebreak
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...with skepticism and distrust; and it was unclear that Nixon had ever approved of the interval idea at all, that he was willing to sacrifice the Saigon regime in talks with Hanoi. In any event, the decent interval was transformed into what was known in White House jargon as "firebreak"; the United States would leave Vietnam in a show of military force, and only after Saigon had been sufficiently shored up so that it might survive on its own. With the "decent interval," the South Vietnamese would only have been given a year or two to last after the final...