Word: saigon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...middle of A Bright Shining Lie, it is difficult to disagree with this bold assertion. Perhaps Sheehan overstates his case when he credits Vann with saving the Saigon regime from collapse, not once but twice: after the 1968 Tet offensive and again in 1972. Nevertheless, in Sheehan's characterization Vann emerges as a personality to rival the most complex creations of fiction. He was a brave soldier, a brilliant analyst, a born maverick and a savvy political infighter. He was also, as Sheehan eventually learned, a shameless hypocrite with a "secret vice" he could not or would not control...
Vann first arrived in Viet Nam in 1962 as an Army lieutenant colonel. He quickly learned that the South Vietnamese forces he was advising suffered from "an institutionalized unwillingness to fight." When his superiors refused to heed his reports and force Saigon to engage the Communist guerrillas, he took his case to the small cadre of resident reporters, including Sheehan and David Halberstam of the New York Times. By the time Vann's one-year tour ended, the reporters were convinced that he had jeopardized his military career by speaking out. Halberstam, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his Viet...
When Do Van Tron escaped from Saigon to San Jose in 1982, no bank would take a chance on his business prospects. Do lacked a credit history, had no money and spoke no English. Today, however, the 31-year-old refugee publishes a Vietnamese-language newspaper, tools around town in a silver Jaguar and has started plans to build a shopping center. The reasons for his rapid rise: long hours of work, plenty of thrift and $4,800 in start-up capital from an unconventional source. Like thousands of other immigrants, the budding entrepreneur tapped an ethnic loan club...
WHILE East Asia was building its economic power, the superpower duo was building up their arms caches. Like bumbling giants, both have the strength of 10 nations but can't figure out how to use it. The U.S. may have figured this out in 1975 when Saigon fell; the Soviet Union is learning this critical lesson now as it tries to extricate itself from the disastrous campaign in Afghanistan...
...first time that American good intentions had led to chaos. In The Quiet American, Graham Greene's 1955 fictionalized but accurate portrayal of early U.S. adventurism in Viet Nam, an American bomb- assassination plot aimed at corrupt South Vietnamese officers goes awry, killing innocent shoppers and children in a Saigon square. Amid the carnage, a confrontation ensues between Alden Pyle, the well-meaning but naive protagonist, and the novel's narrator, a British journalist...