Word: saigon
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...base movie theater in Saigon, amidst dormant popcorn machines and the empty "coming attraction" windows that had once trumpeted the derring-do of the Green Berets, some 200 soldiers, secretaries and journalists listened to the disembodied voice of an Army public affairs officer hidden behind a stage curtain, explaining that the Army had come to South Viet Nam to "defend against external aggression" and "had decisively defeated the enemy." After a few more words, a 26-man Vietnamese band played ruffles and flourishes, USARV'S blue banner was furled and stuffed into a canvas bag for eventual shipment...
...banking that a future coalition of previously contending nations will act like a magnet, and that soon even irascible India will be drawn in for her own good. Nixon understands the world. "It's a street scene to him," Kissinger once said in admiration. "You talk of Saigon or Karachi or almost any place, and he has been there. He can see it and hear it and smell...
...first stage went smoothly enough, with the North releasing 1,032 captives in return for some 7,000 Communists held in the South. The second swap was delayed for more than a week as the two sides quarreled over the accuracy of each other's lists. Saigon says it holds 27,000 Communists, but the Viet Cong says the true number is many times larger. Similarly, the Communists say they hold 4,785 Saigon troops, but Saigon says the real total is 36,603. By week's end some 1,500 more Communists had been released as part...
...squabbling, the sorest point of all is the status of "political prisoners." Despite the Paris settlement calling for the release of all "civilian internees," both sides are using their own vague definitions of when a nonmilitary enemy sympathizer becomes a political prisoner. Saigon says Hanoi holds 59,118 of them, while Hanoi says Saigon has more than 200,000. Whatever the true totals, neither side is ready to release political prisoners on the same schedule as the official P.O.W.s. Victims of torture on both sides, they languish in a legal never-never land, protected by neither the Paris Accords...
Those who refused to renounce the Communists were carted off to the French-built Con Son, 140 miles south of Saigon in the South China Sea, for political reeducation. Of the 8,945 prisoners there, 6,467 are considered Communists. Due to a steady diet of beatings-as well as sand and pebbles in the rice-dysentery, tuberculosis and chronic stomach disorders were common. Water was limited to three swallows a day, forcing prisoners to drink urine. Those who pleaded-for more food were splashed with lye or poked with long bamboo poles...