Word: potted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...years since Phnom-Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, more than a third of the population of Cambodia, once estimated at 8 million, has perished from war, disease and the genocidal policies of the murderous Pol Pot regime. Last week, as the Vietnamese prepared for a final onslaught on sanctuaries near the Thai border used by the Pol Pot forces, Cambodia faced yet another horror: a famine. At least 2 million people are believed to be on the verge of death by starvation or disease. Many have been reduced to eating the leaves off trees, peeling the bark and boiling...
Famine is only the latest in a series of wrenching tragedies that have befallen Cambodia since it first became engulfed by the Indochina war in 1970. Following the Communist takeover by China-backed Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in 1975, between 2 million and 3 million Cambodians were systematically murdered or otherwise eliminated under a genocidal "purification" policy. It was aimed at destroying the educated class and creating a peasant society. Some journalists who have visited the country have seen mass graves and torture camps reminiscent of Dachau and Auschwitz...
Shaplen emphasizes the United States' failures in any number of Asian revolutions, offering candid assessments of people and policies that contributed to our mistakes. His chapters on the Indochinese nations, particularly Vietnam and Cambodia, are especially effective. He reminisces colorfully on Saigon under siege and the atrocities of Pol Pot's regime but does not limit himself to narrative. In the section entitled, "Why the Americans Failed," he writes...
...deposed Pol Pot regime destroyed most of the machinery, factories and agricultural machinery in Cambodia, Howard said...
...There are 50 doctors in the whole of Cambodia, there are 350 in Paris alone. The government has eight cars and there are four locomotives in the whole country. Pol Pot just destroyed the human society's ability to survive. The end result of all the wars is a society going towards extinction," Howard said...