Word: phat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...General Nguyen Khanh after Khanh seized power a year ago. One day last week, troops appeared in the streets of Saigon, and Colonel Thao popped out of a tank turret, explaining: "This operation is to expel Nguyen Khanh from the government." With Thao was Catholic ex-General Lam Van Phat, who led an abortive September "coupette" and had been on the lam ever since...
...leader of a war-torn nation for too long. His only ideological offerings were weary anti-Communism and vague nationalism. Meanwhile, the war went poorly, and in defeat Buddhists and Catholics found their historical hatreds coming to a boil. When Khanh dismissed Roman Catholic Interior Minister Lam Van Phat, a dour, desiccated brigadier general who felt the Premier had given in too easily to Buddhist reform demands, the situation reached flash point...
...Rescue. The revolt was short lived, and what put Phat in the fire was simply bad organization. His was one of two groups that had been plotting a coup and, of the pair, the least likely to succeed. Composed largely of Roman Catholic "outs," Phat's men were strong in their denunciation of Khanh as a "traitor" but weak on rallying tactical military support. Phat's only triumph lay in convincing Major General Duong Van Due to send elements of his Mekong Delta-based IV Corps north to Saigon. Ironically, Due thought he was joining another coup-that...
When he realized that Phat's "coupette" had failed, he quickly sent his U.S.-built jets circling low over the capital to threaten the rebels. Meanwhile, a pair of C-47s (lent to him by the U.S. Air Force) whipped down to Cap St. Jacques, where two companies of South Vietnamese marines loyal to Khanh were waiting. Several battalions of loyal army troops were also ferried into Saigon, and the coup quickly dissolved...
...result of a big misunderstanding on both sides. I don't think either group will start anything, but both think the other will." Tough Tennis. In Honolulu, on his flight back to his political job in Saigon, Ambassador Taylor stepped perspiring from a tennis game to comment that Phat's coup "certainly was unannounced and unheralded." In view of developments, said Taylor, he would "get going as fast as we can get a crew together." The news from Saigon was especially depressing to Washington, not only because Lyndon Johnson is in the midst of a presidential campaign...