Word: lon
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...Nixon claimed in his speech that South Vietnam was threatened by the sudden appearance of the North Vietnamese on its Cambodian flank; yet subsequent reports have shown that the North Vietnamese had in fact been drifting westward and waiting cautiously to see what action the rightist military junta of Lon Nol-who had overthrown neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk the month before-would take against them. And a major ex post facto rationale for the invasion-that it closed the port of Sihanoukville-is an even greater fabrication: authoritative Administration sources now state that Sihanoukville was closed to the Communists...
...Cambodia clearly originated with Nixon and Kissinger. On an international level, America's great nemesis and North Vietnam's principal supporter-the Soviet Union-had moved now, powerful missiles into the Middle East. The North Vietnamese were posing an implicit threat to the regime of America's ally, Lon Nol. At home, Congressional liberals had repudiated the White House on Judge Carswell and the Family Assistance Plan. Nixon and Kissinger wanted to show all these forces that the Administration was strong, manly, and unpredictable. And without consulting either Congress or-at any great length-the Secretaries of State and Defense...
...INVASION of Cambodia was an incontestable expression of a policy that the Administration had been following all along: escalation and graduated threat. As a result of the action, allied forces are now fighting in Cambodia, and the United States has been committed to a defense of Lon Nol as well as Thieu-Ky. And the invasion was a jumping-off point for other aggressive actions by which the United States has simultaneously attempted to demonstrate its strength and unpredictability: a brutal bombing raid on North Vietnam last November and the ground invasion of Laos by the South Vietnamese last February...
...almost 30 years, flamboyant Prince Norodom Sihanouk was revered as a "god-king" by what he called his "7,000,000 little Buddhas." Now it seems as if the same role has fallen, unbidden, upon ascetic Premier Lon Nol. Soon after he resigned last month, still semi-paralyzed in the wake of a near-fatal stroke, it became obvious that no one could even come close to forming an acceptable government without his mystically legitimizing presence. So last week, Cambodia resolved its 18-day government crisis by keeping Lon Nol on as a purely symbolic premier...
...real rule of the country falls to a "Premier-Delegate." He is Sisowath Sirik Matak, 57, the shrewd and ambitious administrator who had been virtually running Cambodia anyway as Vice Premier and Lon Nol's closest confidant. Sirik Matak is not only a cousin, but also an old foe of Sihanouk, and he is widely assumed to have been the chief architect of the plot that ousted the prince 15 months...