Word: minh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...embargo" on news from the area was lifted, more than 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops were involved in strikes that not only spanned the length of South Viet Nam but vitally affected its neighbors as well. Was the main object to sever the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail? Was it a feint to throw the Communists off balance? Was an invasion scheduled and then delayed because Nixon developed a case of cold feet?as some sources suggested but the Administration denied? Whatever the case, the operation suggested that in the process of retreating from South Viet...
There was every indication that for the South Vietnamese, it was only a pause. At least one and perhaps two cross-border thrusts aimed at immobilizing the Ho Chi Minh Trail seemed imminent. One obvious target lay right down Route 9?Tchepone, a Communist staging area and a key control point for the Ho Chi Minh Trail 25 miles inside the Laotian panhandle. A second possibility was that ARVN troops would be helicoptered to the mountainous Bolovens Plateau, which forms the western flank of the trail. Their likely objective: Attopeu and Saravane, two Laotian river towns captured last spring...
Since the Cambodian port of Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville) was closed to them last spring, the Communists have had to rely solely on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move men and supplies down to South Viet Nam and Cambodia. With the advent of the dry season, they have made fuller use of the trail than ever before (see box. page 28). American commanders have longed to cut the trail ever since the U.S. entered the war. Contingency plans providing for everything from hit-and-run attacks to a permanent troop barrier across the route were drawn...
...January, soon after Laird departed. General Cao Van Vien, chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint Chiefs of Staff, told his subordinates that there would be no more talking to the press ?particularly about operations in Military Region I. Soon after, Abrams met Vien and Major General Tran Van Minh, the South Vietnamese air force chief, to discuss strategy. The three met twice more in the next two days...
...Danang. But MACV asserted that it also posed a "serious threat" to U.S. troop withdrawals and that a "preemptive offensive" was planned with "limited objectives." Few reporters in Saigon doubted that the jargon was a verbal screen for a direct ARVN assault on the Ho Chi Minh Trail...