Word: thieu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...there in the jeopardy Ford feared. Even privately to order their evacuation could spread the same kind of panic that in recent weeks had seized millions of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians in their headlong flight from northern provinces. Even to suggest that the government of President Nguyen Van Thieu would finally have to stand on its own without further injections of massive U.S. military aid would be to risk the outrage of South Vietnamese troops and increasingly anti-American civilians. That could produce what high U.S. officials termed "nightmarish possibilities." By this they meant a final Viet Nam horror...
...seek the military aid or else see the safety of the Americans imperiled. They were, in effect, hostages in South Viet Nam, and the aid money was meant as ransom to get them out. The requested funds were not to be ransom to the government of President Thieu but a stimulant to the confidence of the South Vietnamese that they might still hold out. As these Washington officials depicted it, if Ford had made his speech without asking for the $722 million in arms, Saigon and its people would have felt finally jettisoned by the U.S. with immediate, unpredictable...
PRESIDENT FORD'S request last week for nearly a billion dollars in emergency aid to the Thieu government in South Vietnam is disturbing not because it will pass in Congress--it is almost certain it will not--but because of what it showed about Ford's views and priorities...
What of the argument that the U.S. had a moral commitment after the Paris accords to support Thieu with military aid? It did have such a commitment, and it did supply such aid. But it is hard to maintain that paring down that aid was a breach of the commitment, or that the commitment had to run indefinitely. One thing is evident: continuation of American military aid, even at much higher levels, even with the additional amount requested by the President, could not have basically changed the situation. It might have prolonged Saigon's resistance without a clear...
Martin is not alone. As the military situation darkens, newsmen in Saigon sense a rising hostility from the South Vietnamese. The normally bland army newspaper Tien Tuyen (Frontline) last week demanded that the Thieu regime "take strong, hard measures against foreign correspondents" for being "in major part" responsible for Communist gains. As Danang fell, a group of American journalists gave two South Vietnamese marines a lift to the airport. When the marines asked the journalists their nationality, their driver thoughtfully replied that they were English. "That's good," said one of the soldiers. "We're ready to kill...