Word: lon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even though Phnom-Penh was subjected to daily rocket attacks last week, the Lon Nol government seemed blindly optimistic about holding out, apparently convinced that the U.S. will somehow pull it through. But there was little reason for confidence. Along the Mekong River, the government's position has steadily deteriorated. Instead of regaining some of the strategic river positions, as they had planned, loyalist troops have lost much of the ground they retook in late January and in the process have suffered heavy casualties. Some battalions were wiped out completely. Others returned with as few as a dozen...
...airlift is plainly a last-ditch emergency operation aimed at staving off imminent collapse and not a means by which Lon Nol might win the war. With the fighting going so badly for his government, the question is inevitably raised in Phnom-Penh these days as to what kind of government Cambodia might have if the ragged peasant Khmer Rouge soldiers should come marching some time soon into a capital city that most have never seen before. Would there be a bloodbath? The evidence to date is inconclusive. Recently, the insurgents slaughtered civilians in two remote provincial towns, possibly because...
Cadre Shortage. If only because the Khmer Rouge has also suffered in recent fighting, the Lon Nol government could hold out until the rains return in May, thereby gaining several more months of power. On the other hand, the insurgents could decide to hold back in their attack on the capital, preferring to let the government cave in sooner or later from its own weight. In this way the Khmer Rouge could put off assuming the awesome burden of running -and feeding-a capital that is overflowing with thousands of hungry refugees and hundreds of wounded soldiers and civilians...
...Lon Nol's prospects, in short, are bleaker than they have been at any time since he overthrew Sihanouk in 1970. Regardless of whether he receives more emergency U.S. aid, there is little he can do except try to hold out long enough to work out some sort of settlement with his enemies. "Time is running out," U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean fairly shouts to Western newsmen in Phnom-Penh these days, referring to prospects for U.S. aid. It is also running out for Phnom-Penh...
...pleaded with a reluctant Congress to vote $222 million in extra military aid for the Phnom-Penh government. In defense of their request, White House officials and Cabinet members trotted out several arguments. Most compelling was the warning that without an emergency infusion of ammunition, the government of President Lon Nol is in imminent danger of falling to the Communist-led Khmer Rouge insurgents. "An independent Cambodia cannot survive unless the Congress acts very soon to provide supplemental military and economic assistance," President Ford wrote to House Speaker Carl Albert, adding that "if additional military assistance is withheld or delayed...