Word: saigon
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Ambassador to Saigon Maxwell Taylor, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, candidly declared in November 1964: "We still find no plausible explanation of the continued strength of the Viet Cong if our data on the Viet Cong losses are even approximately correct. Not only do the Viet Cong units have the recuperative powers of the phoenix, but they have an amazing ability to maintain morale." The experienced Taylor
...official reports the battle cost ARVN about 800 dead, wounded and missing; the Communists claim that the figure is almost twice as high. Saigon reports that with U.S. air support, its troops inflicted 4,500 casualties on the enemy. Yet as a result of the performance in Snuol, there was enough high-level dismay in Saigon that the task force commander, Brigadier General Nguyen Van Hieu, was relieved of his command...
...forces. The unusual activity of the Communists, together with fresh evidence that they are currently recruiting extra manpower in North Viet Nam, hints at such a plan. They might even decide to come straight down through the DMZ. When? Politically, the ideal time could be somewhere between October, when Saigon holds its presidential election, and April, when the campaigning intensifies for the 1972 U.S. balloting...
...weaknesses. Hanoi's Laotian and Cambodian holdings are very sparsely populated. In South Viet Nam the Communists hold nothing but such desolate regions as portions of the U Minh Forest and the A Shau Valley. The heavily populated and strategically important Mekong Delta and the eleven provinces around Saigon face no substantial military danger. While ARVN troops have performed disappointingly in some recent battles in Cambodia and Laos, the litmus test of the Vietnamization program is how they will defend themselves inside South Viet...
There the record is more impressive -so much so that a senior State Department official who recently returned from Viet Nam is convinced that the reduction of U.S. forces to a bare minimum would not involve prohibitive risks. He even maintains that Saigon is ready to accept, without panicking, an announcement of a specific withdrawal date for American forces...