Word: patheticness
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...monsoon downpour rained on the Plain of Jars last week-and so did a barrage of Communist Pathet Lao artillery and mortar shells. In an effort to consolidate last month's ground gains on the Plain, the Reds began pinpoint artillery attacks on the last remaining Neutralist toe holds on the plateau, as well as on the headquarters of Neutralist Army Leader General Kong Le at Muong Phan, just west of the Plain. Typically, the Reds blamed the U.S. for the resumption of hostilities, said that "the Americans have given orders to the reactionaries of Kong Le to attack...
...lost one of its three heads. Communist Poland recalled its ICC representative to Warsaw in the wake of vigorous U.S. protests that the Pole's "obstructionist tactics" and deliberate boycott of ICC field observation work were sabotaging efforts to maintain a cease-fire between the Neutralists and the Pathet...
...flying visit to the Plain of Jars, Neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma managed to arrange a shaky cease-fire between the Pathet Lao and Kong Le's neutralists. Though sporadic artillery duels still pockmarked the plain, there were no outright Red attacks, and the neutralists lost no new territory. But hostilities threatened to erupt from another quarter. Around the perimeter of the plain, right-wing General Phoumi Nosavan was reinforcing his positions, and in the foothills behind the Pathet Lao lines, tough, well-armed Meo tribesmen, who have no love for the Reds, posed a dangerous threat to Communist supply...
...crisis cool of its own accord. If they moved off the plain, they would surely march right into a civil war with Phoumi's rightist forces, thus inviting U.S. intervention, which they wished to avoid at all costs. Despite protests by both Souvanna and the U.S., the Pathet Lao's territorial grab was a fait accompli. There were those in the U.S. who thought the only long-range answer to the Laos problem was outright partition. Already a de facto partition of Laos existed: the northern part of the country was firmly controlled by the Communists...
...plain is named for the scores of large, stone burial urns dotting the area, in which the ancestral ashes of the Laotian people were once deposited. Both the Pathet Lao and the neutralists avoid fighting near the jars, for Laotian tradition holds that the penalty for disturbing them is a violent and fiery retribution from the spirits within...