Word: saigon
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...best Thieu can hope for," concluded one State Department official, "is a stalemate." Would more U.S. aid have helped? Ford Administration officials last week emphatically answered yes, and tried to blame Saigon's reverses on congressional failure to appropriate the extra $300 million requested by the President. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger argued that if the U.S. had been "less niggardly" toward South Viet Nam, Thieu would not have to give up the provinces. To support that point, White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen displayed an article from the Hanoi journal Hoc Tap that seemed to tie the current...
...only logical to conclude that a reduction in U.S. aid to the South would encourage Hanoi in its war against Saigon. Still it is hard to argue convincingly that $300 million more would have made the crucial difference. Even in the days when the U.S. was spending $2 billion a month in South Viet Nam, the Communists were capable of mounting costly countrywide offensives. With at least 16 full divisions, totaling 325,000 men, installed in the South, the North Vietnamese could hardly be stopped with a comparatively small amount...
Besides, a lack of materiel is only part of Saigon's military problem. Even in the days when it had virtually unlimited ordnance, transport and firepower, ARVN was never as effective on the battlefield as were the Communist armies. Even today, though it no longer enjoys an overwhelming superiority in firepower, ARVN still outnumbers the Communists by some 3 to 1. Incompetent leadership, corruption, profiteering by officers and low pay for enlisted men often sapped the strength of Saigon's forces. True, because of the American involvement, Saigon has a far better fighting force than it had earlier...
More U.S. aid cannot stop the fighting. Only a negotiated settlement between Saigon and the Communists-or the currently implausible scenario of an unconditional surrender by one side or the other-can do that. Hanoi still yearns for a political victory in the South -meaning, in the words of one State Department official, "the imposition of a coalition government which the North Vietnamese would dominate...
Countless thousands of the half million or more people who fled their homes in the abandoned provinces for government-held territory made their way to the coastal city of Danang. TIME'S Saigon Bureau Chief Peter Range flew there last week and filed this report...