Word: commandant
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...secret that several officers in the U.S. command's secret information-gathering center in Saigon keep Japanese-made "laughing bags" on their desks. The little battery-operated noise boxes emit an 18-second burst of hysterical laughter at the push of a button. Officers have been known to push the button during working hours-quite possibly in response to the latest batch of statistics to arrive from the battlefields or hamlets of Indochina...
...command in Saigon, for example, announced last week that 708,544 enemy troops have been killed in Viet Nam since 1961-more than the total number of Communist troops estimated to be in all of Indochina at present (650,000). "If the figures are not true," says a U.S. embassy source in Saigon, "then we are not hitting them as hard as we think. If the figures are true, then they demonstrate a frightening commitment on the part of the enemy." In Cambodia, similarly, more than 22,500 Communists have been reported killed since the allied invasion began last April...
Helicopter loss figures seem no more reliable. As of last week, reported the U.S. command, 38 helicopters had been lost over Laos in combat and two destroyed in a mid-air collision since Feb. 8. The fact is, about 200 helicopters had been lost over Laos by week's end. The command, it seems, reports only those choppers that are totally destroyed and cannot be retrieved...
...week's end Yahya Khan announced in a radio broadcast that the Constituent Assembly would convene after all on March 25. "As long as I am in command of the armed forces, I will ensure the complete and absolute integrity of Pakistan." Nevertheless, it seemed doubtful that Yahya's decision to convene the assembly would pacify Mujib. Two days earlier, the East Pakistani leader said of the West Pakistanis: "I will break them and bring them to their knees." After such a statement, an outright declaration of independence could be little more than an anticlimax...
...Laos yesterday, the fighting was limited to a few Marine skirmishes south west of the Laotian border. The U. S. command reported that five more American helicopters were shot down over the weekend, raising the total...