Word: patheticness
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...meeting with top U.S. aides in Bangkok, Admiral Harry D. Felt, commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, discussed contingency plans in the event that the Pathet Lao moves off the Plain of Jars into the Mekong River valley. The U.S. is not committed to put troops into Laos, and the military is not enthusiastic about the prospect of fighting there, for the lack of airfields, railroads and good roads would make it tough to sustain operations. But if the Pathet Lao showed an inclination to sweep all the way south, the U.S. forces in Thailand might well have...
Fleeing Neutralists. The week began with a desperate flight to the plain by Neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma, who hoped it still might be possible to arrange a cease-fire between the Communist Pathet Lao and Neutralist Army Chief Kong Le. Things seemed cheery enough as the opposing leaders embraced and their troops exchanged cigarettes. But. as one neutralist put it, "we exchange cigarettes during the day and bullets at night." All too true. Hardly had Souvanna departed when the truce abruptly collapsed...
...knows who fired first, but all of a sudden the Pathet Lao was shooting, and the neutralists were running. On the dusty Plaine des Jarres airstrip, mothers breastfed dirty babies, and children sagged under the weight of parachute packs crammed with household belongings as they patiently waited for planes to evacuate them to the Laotian capital of Vientiane, 120 miles away. In his ramshackle, tin-roofed headquarters, guarded night and day by a patrolling platoon of tanks, Kong Le worked round the clock drawing up a battle plan, although weakened by a liver ailment and a serious sinus condition...
...troops would join forces with a right-wing army just southwest of the Plaine des Jarres and launch a joint counterattack against the Reds that would surely precipitate civil war. Desperately he appealed to Britain and Russia, overseers of the Geneva agreement, for quick intervention to stop the Pathet Lao's flagrant violations of the ceasefire...
...Soviet intervention at this stage might turn them increasingly toward Red China, Russia's rival, for support in their revolution. But Nikita Khrushchev was also under pressure from a different quarter. In Washington, President Kennedv made it clear that he ex pected Moscow to put a stop to Pathet Lao pressure and live up to the Geneva agreement. "We will, I think, have a chance to see in the next few days whether we are going to have a destruction of that accord-whether the Soviet Union and other signatories are going to meet their obligations," said Kennedy...