When the new U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, Charles Whitehouse, arrived in Bangkok last week, something less than a red-carpet welcome awaited him. Student radicals had festooned the airport with banners reading BASTARD FORD, GET YOUR TROOPS OUT! and FORD, YOU DESTROY INTERNATIONAL LAW. Thai government officials denounced the Pentagon's dispatch of Marines and helicopters from the U.S.-operated Utapao airbase to the rescue of the American merchant vessel Mayaguez as "madness"; Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj reacted with what he first described as "displeasure" and later as outright "fury." At week's end an...
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