The air war in Indochina

"For those who want to understand our present strategy in Indochina, this book provides the essential facts, the facts you may wish you did not know. In March 1972 a member of the United States Congress asked the President of the United States for a breakdown of the tonnage of bombs dropped as well as the number of sorties flown in South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. He received a reply from a high official at the Pentagon to the effect that ` the sensitivity of the detailed information on sortie rates, tonnages, and target areas which you requested is such that it can only appropriately be discussed in an executive session of the Committee on Armed Services.'"
"It was just a year earlier in March 1971 that Professor Raphael Littauer of Cornell began to ask the same sorts of questions and found that very little data were available in a systematic manner and apparently no work was in progress to assemble such data. Deciding that he wanted answers, a working group of ten faculty members and ten students, most of them at Cornell, was formed to carefully assess the air war in Indochina by examining the public record and conducting a series of interviews. The first edition of this report was published in 1971 and was quickly recognized as the most important gathering material on the subject available to the American people. Now the authors have fully revised and brought up to date their findings. Always reminding us that the air war is not confined to Vietnam, the authors analyze with care not only the air war in North Vietnam and South Vietnam, but also in Cambodia and Laos. In addition they offer insights and necessary information on the ecological impact of the war, the monetary costs, ant the war's relation to the United States Constitution-- providing the kind of information every thoughtful citizen needs today."

História