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Takeover. For the Communists have thoroughly taken over what Souvanna envisioned as a popular uprising aimed at making Laos a neutralist state. Kong Le's officers now mouth Communist slogans such as "Down with Fascist American imperialism," and the Pathet Lao's supreme military commander, Colonel Sinkapo. now runs the military forces. The 150 students who followed Kong Le into the Plaine des Jarres have all been shipped off to Hanoi for Communist schooling. "Let the American imperialists dare attack us." says Sisana Sisane. editor of a Pathet Lao newspaper. "Behind us we have millions and millions of friends. We fight for an ideal, not for liquor and women like the others." One morning, when a U.S. transport plane flew into sight, Pathet Lao officers identified it to their men as "a jet from the Seventh Fleet-it has just machine-gunned a hospital."
Cocky and well disciplined, the rebels are contemptuous of the royal army (though not of the wild Meo tribesmen. who ambush rebel patrols). Neither the rebels nor their foreign advisers talk of peace. "Our side could take over all of Laos in three days," boasted a Russian reporter, one of a dozen Communist-bloc newsmen on the scene. "We have been patient, very patient. It is only a matter of time."