Word: pathetically
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...year-old war in Laos is fought by words and guns, by strange antagonists for curious motives. Many of the Meo people battle the Communist Pathet Lao rebels because the Pathet Lao interfere with their traditional opium trade. Laotian politicians-right, left and neutralist -jabber inconclusively in the hope of forming a coalition government that can unite the country. And in faraway Geneva, Russia, Red China, the U.S. and eleven other nations scrap interminably over a workable arrangement for ending the war. Biggest bone of contention: the withdrawal of foreign troops from Laos, including the 300-man U.S. Military Assistance...
With the disintegration of the West's position in Laos, most areas along the South Viet Nam border are now held by the Pathet Lao, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail has become an almost open thoroughfare through which Communist reinforcements pour into Diem's beleaguered country. Already the Communists are hard at work enlarging camps and even building airstrips in southern Laos for the rising struggle against South Viet Nam's harassed 150,000-man army...
...wiliest guerrillas in the Communist Pathet Lao are Meos, who scamper by night over mountain slopes that would terrify the valley-dwelling Lao. On the pro-Western side. Colonel Vang Pao, a Royal Army Meo, has held stubbornly to a precipitous stronghold deep inside Communist territory, nicknamed "Happy Valley" by the U.S. pilots who must swoop down into it to land supplies...
Radio Hanoi has been wooing the Meos for years with Meo-language broadcasts, but the tribe reportedly split into pro-and anti-Communist factions after a quarrel over the division of the opium crop. Colonel Vang and his cousin, Health Minister Touby Lyfoung, lead the loyalist Meos. The Pathet Lao Meos follow Chief Phay Dang, described by Communist Journalist Wilfred Burchett, who once visited him, as "a noble figure with a fine head, the dignity and poise of a great Indian chief...
...Pentagon confirmed that the story was all too probable. Four U.S. soldiers stationed with the Laotian army as PEO military advisers were lost when the Pathet Lao overran Vang Vieng ten weeks ago. Also missing are three helicopter crewmen and an NBC photographer who went down in a crash behind enemy lines and a Long Island contractor who disappeared on a hunting trip...