Word: viet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...week's end the count stood at 229 dead and 81 wounded. It was the highest number of American casualties in a single day since Jan. 13, 1968, when 246 servicemen were killed throughout Viet Nam at the start of the Tet offensive. In the heart of West Beirut, about two miles from the airport, searchers hunted through the remains of a nine-story building housing French paratroopers that had been hit minutes after the airport bombing; the French toll was 56 dead, with two missing and 15 injured...
...decided to become a cook at age ten, his sister Elizabeth says, after he baked his mother an unaccountably successful cake. And he decided to become a Marine at 18, after his older brother Clarence died in Viet...
When Ed Kimm enlisted in 1969, he had an idea about somehow redeeming his brother's death, and put in for a tour in Viet Nam, which was refused. He became a lifer anyway, planning to retire (and buy a horse ranch, he figured) around the turn of the century. But his peripatetic Marine career evidently did not jibe with marriage: the Kimms split...
...from consolidating its power beyond Beirut, there seemed to be no mission for the troops except as a symbolic presence. George Ball, who was Under Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson, expresses the dilemma that such a situation creates: "God knows we might have learned from our tragic Viet Nam fiasco that, as a great power, we should deploy our troops only where they are vitally needed and it is clear they can be effectively used ... [otherwise] their bitter plight will exhibit not America's strength but its impotence...
...most tangible constraint on the use of American force is the War Powers Act, passed in the wake of the war in Viet Nam. Every President during the ten years the law has been on the books has disputed the constitutionality of its provision that the President cannot deploy troops in combat situations for more than 60 days without the approval of Congress, and the Supreme Court has not ruled conclusively on the issue. Reagan informed Congress of the invasion of Grenada, as required by the law, but refrained from indicating compliance with the 60-day requirement. The Senate voted...