Word: saigon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Many within the Administration disagree with Nixon's extreme tactics, believing that Washington should have accepted the October agreement and forced Saigon to go along. Besides its human cost, the policy of massive bombing carries other high risks. Détente with Moscow and Peking could be chilled; Congress could rebel. But even Nixon's critics must concede that recent precedent is on his side. Similar risks applied when he ordered the mining of North Vietnamese harbors in May. Nixon not only got away with that unscathed; he could well argue that his gamble led to the serious...
...keep it that way, Nixon also had an ultimatum of sorts last week for South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. Nixon sent Kissinger's deputy, General Alexander Haig, to Saigon with a letter for Thieu. It warned Thieu against making any diversionary peace demands of his own and told him to be prepared to sign any agreement reached between Washington and Hanoi. If he demurs, Nixon said, Congress will be inclined to end all assistance to South Viet Nam and, he implied, the White House would not press Capitol Hill to do otherwise. Apparently Washington wanted Hanoi...
...copy through his sources in Viet Nam and asked Kissinger if the text was accurate. Said Kissinger suavely: "It has the odious smell of the truth." On another level, late one night before the election, Nixon came back to Washington from a campaign trip and Kissinger flew in from Saigon. The President told Kissinger that the two of them had been on different journeys that day, but he believed the roads led to the same goal...
...spirit of national interest and Realpolltik naturally dictated disengagement from Viet Nam. Yet Saigon's hold on the U.S. was once again disastrously tenacious. Elected in 1968 on a pledge to end the war, Nixon chose an excruciatingly slow four-year policy of Vietnamization ? turning the war over to Thieu's forces ? as a means, so he thought, to salvage some "honor" from the commitment. His forays to Moscow and Peking this year were decisive in turning Hanoi toward
...fate of Saigon's political prisoners is one of the most troublesome issues bedeviling the prospects of peace. Hanoi claims that the nine-point agreement worked out by Henry Kissinger and Le Due Tho provides that "all captured and detained personnel will be returned simultaneously with the U.S. troop withdrawal." But to release the prisoners would present a delicate problem to President Thieu. Most of them are resentful enough to support any leftist opposition and work to bring his government down...