Word: saigon
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More than a decade of large-scale fighting in Southeast Asia has left many Americans with the impression that the war-weary South Vietnamese, if given a free choice, would gladly exchange a military dictatorship in Saigon for a Communist regime if they could get peace in the bargain. To hear some antiwar activists tell it, Hanoi's forces are benevolent friends of the South Vietnamese population. Well, not quite. The fact is that the North Vietnamese have sometimes been shockingly brutal in their treatment of South Vietnamese who happened to be under their control...
...Hoai Nhon district, 300 townspeople were herded together in front of a village school and designated a "people's court." They were invited to denounce the crimes of a man named Phung Sao, who had been in charge of the town's military affairs under the Saigon government. A few villagers accused Sao of using his position to assassinate a number of revolutionary cadres. The "president" of the court declared, "The people have decided that Sao will be executed for crimes against the people." In less than an hour, Sao's bullet-ridden body was turned over...
...question-control of South Viet Nam following a ceasefire. Hanoi wants Washington to get rid of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu as a condition for a settlement. Washington in turn is seeking a formula that would permit the U.S. to withdraw militarily while leaving the political settlement to Saigon and Hanoi. In other words, the U.S. would be willing to leave things so that Hanoi has a fair chance of getting rid of Thieu by itself-without, however, the U.S.'s doing the North's dirty work...
Thieu-Teared. One of the latest approaches is a U.S. proposal for a "two-tier" government for South Viet Nam. One Saigon government would control the non-Communist portion of the South and another would run the Communist-held parts-perhaps including all or most of Quang Tri and Binh Dinh provinces and a slice of Military Region II along the Laotian border...
Such a plan would presumably cover only a transitional period during which the two governments would negotiate with each other as equals -though the Communist group would in fact be Hanoi's representatives. The plan neatly circumvents Hanoi's refusal to talk directly with Saigon. It also meets Washington's demand that a coalition government must not be forced upon Saigon. U.S. military aid to Saigon would probably be strictly limited to defensive weapons. Since the plan would almost certainly result in the resignation of Thieu, it has been described by one Washington wag as being...