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The North Vietnamese version is that the U.S. welshed on other equally vital parts of the agreement. In October the Americans seemed willing to leave certain points dealing with the political future and the sovereignty of South Viet Nam deliberately vague, to be settled not in fine print but in later political—and possibly military—wrangling after the U.S. departure. Later, they claim, Nixon directed Kissinger to spell out the agreement more exactly—in favor of the South. Specifically, the North Vietnamese claimed that the U.S. was not standing by its commitment to withdraw all its troops from South Viet Nam but was instead demanding the right to have civilian advisers on the ground even after the truce. North Vietnamese spokesmen also charged that the International Control Commission envisioned by the U.S.—some 5,000 strong—would be a virtual police force. "This has never been the North Vietnamese nor the Provisional Revolutionary Government's idea of a control commission," said a top-ranking North Vietnamese.
The Administration, on the other hand, claims that the North first stalled on the matter of international controls, then proposed a minuscule force of 250 men so as to ensure its impotence. Fumed one U.S. official: "They knew and they agreed that the international machinery would have to go into effect immediately. But they proposed outrageous protocols, there was no agenda and they refused to compare texts."
The P.O.W. issue proved to be the final blow. Nixon broke off the peace talks, warned the North Vietnamese that the bombing would resume if they did not soften their bargaining stance and, when the North Vietnamese did not respond, launched his blitz. After a week of continuous pounding, the President halted the raids for 36 hours over Christmas, providing a pause in which Hanoi could again respond. It did not, so the raids recommenced, this time with effect. Hanoi's response was timely for the Administration, since it did not seem feasible that the raids could have continued very much longer, for several reasons, including the exhaustion of targets, the continuing loss of B-52s and airmen, and public opinion both at home and abroad. Also, Congress reconvenes this week, and continued bombing would provide a powerful impetus to cut off funds for the war. Already the President has lost the support of Republican Senator William Saxbe of Ohio, who until last week had backed Nixon by voting against almost all of the antiwar proposals in the Senate. He could no longer have done so, said Saxbe, had the bombing gone on: "It worried me as an American that we were doing something that I just couldn't buy and I think most people felt the same way."
Message. The question remains why the President embarked on so massive a retaliation, one that he surely knew, and therefore must have chosen with some anguish, would cause heavy casualties both for North Viet Nam and U.S. flyers. The first and soon abandoned Administration rationale was that the bombardment was to halt a North Vietnamese offensive. In fact, by all intelligence estimates, none was in preparation. Now the Administration's argument is that a major show of force was required to bring Hanoi around on the terms of a peace.