Word: laird
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...retrospect but mortifying when experienced. Our advancemen had conceived the extraordinary idea that the President should leave for the Sixth Fleet from St. Peter's Square in a U.S. helicopter. The Curia, feeling that this represented enough martial trappings for one day, suggested that Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird not be included in the audience that the Holy Father would offer. However, as the official party was moving into the papal chamber for the general audience, Laird, a politician of considerable ingenuity, suddenly appeared, chewing on his ubiquitous cigar. Asked what he was doing there, he mumbled something about...
...group was placed in two rows at right angles to Nixon and the Holy Father, who were seated side by side. The Pope was making a graceful little speech when suddenly smoke came pouring out of Laird's pocket. To quell the fire caused by his cigar, he started slapping his side. Some of the others whose angle of vision prevented them from grasping the full drama of the Secretary of Defense immolating himself in front of the Pope took Laird's efforts at fire extinguishing as applause, into which they joined. Only wisdom accumulated over two millenniums...
...Israeli ground operation could produce a Middle Eastern war. I called Sisco, who said he agreed with the President's decision. I next called Secretary of State William Rogers, who had serious reservations, especially in the absence of a formal Jordanian request for ground support. Defense Secretary Mel Laird was ambiguous; he wanted to consider the intelligence. At 7:10 a.m. I urged the President again to call a meeting of his senior advisers in view of the differences of opinion among them. He now reluctantly agreed...
Nixon set a June 30 cutoff date for the Cambodian incursion. Eventually, 32,000 U.S. ground troops were involved. But, Kissinger says, casualties "never reached more than a quarter of the 800 a week that Laird had feared," and dropped sharply after that. At the time, Kissinger estimated that the action would delay Hanoi's next major offensive by six to eight months; Sir Robert Thompson, the British expert on guerrilla warfare, figured that it would set the North Vietnamese back by as much as two years. Thompson proved to be right. But that did not help to defuse...
Nixon told his colleagues that he approved attacks on the base areas by South Vietnamese forces with U.S. support. Since the South Vietnamese could handle only one offensive, Wheeler recommended that they go after Parrot's Beak. This led to a debate about American participation; Laird and Rogers sought to confine it to an absolute minimum, opposing even American advisers or tactical air support...