Word: saigon
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...bitter critics charge, however, that Kissinger deliberately misled the South Vietnamese to buy a "decent interval" during which the U.S. could withdraw its troops and leave Saigon strong enough to survive a few years so that when the collapse came, it would not be viewed as a setback for Washington...
Both Washington and Saigon realized that ARVN's only chance of standing alone was if it had enormous amounts of U.S. supplies...
...fiscal 1973, the Administration got $3.8 billion in aid (of which $3.3 billion was military); this year it asked for $1.4 billion in military aid and so far has got $700 million, with Congress still to vote on $300 million in supplementary funds. Plainly, congressional reductions did not pauperize Saigon. When the debacle began a month ago, ARVN was still equipped with some of the world's best weaponry ? U.S. grenade launchers, artillery, M-16 rifles, M48 tanks, helicopters, jet warplanes, trucks, transports and an extensive communications network...
...broader sense, it could be argued that Hué and Danang were abandoned not because South Vietnamese troops lacked ammunition and equipment, but because of a disastrous failure of leadership and loss of will to fight. Congressional delays in approving the latest request for supplementary aid were seen in Saigon as a demoralizing signal and in Hanoi as an encouraging one. But after a decade of direct involvement, $150 billion and 56,000 American lives, it is hard to see how a few hundred million dollars more would have been decisive...
Newspaper editorials expressed similar views. The Pittsburgh Press wrote: "Saigon's battlefield performance has been so miserable and panicky that one cannot believe that more aid would have changed the outcome." Said the Chicago Tribune: "Surely a moral commitment does not mean an obligation to help a country bleed to its last...