Word: thieu
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...been over a year now since Henry Kissinger's premature "peace is at hand" statement, and peace in Indochina still is not at hand. In Vietnam alone, 50,000 people have been killed and 50,000 wounded since last January's cease-fire, according to General Thieu's figures. Another 100,000 political prisoners fill Thieu's jails, according to Amnesty International--Vietnamese sources put the figure at twice that. South Vietnamese jails are full of prisoners who are beaten, tortured, and kept in cells too small to move around in from which they emerge crippled for life...
...less of a pro, though, without the United States. Last year, the U.S. paid over 70 per cent of his budget in direct aid. Thieu used this money and other American assistance--weapons and advice--for repression...
This year the Nixon administration asked Congress for $2.5 billion to help Thieu some more. About 76 per cent of this would serve as direct aid to Thieu's army, and various senators have found other concealed...
...this is all right. If in ten years the government decides it prefers mass transit to highways, it will just divert its funds away from the highways. But when the United States decided early this year that it was going to stop killing Vietnamese--contenting itself with giving General Thieu enough money and weapons to go on killing them himself--that didn't bring the old ladies it had killed back to life. A killing can't be reversed on reconsideration. That is why actions taken to stop killing, or to slow down its rate, or to hinder the killers...
There are still atrocities going on in Vietnam, and they're still financed by the United States, which pays 70 to 80 per cent of General Thieu's budget in direct aid. That pays for Thieu's jails, where 100,000 political prisoners are kept and on occasion tortured in various picturesque ways, and for the year-old "peace" which Thieu's probably-understated figures say has killed 50,000 Vietnamese already. Armstrong is a reminder of Thieu's prisoners, and of all the world's prisoners forced to do things they don't like by systems and times they...