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Look It Up. Congressional doves exploded. The Administration, they charged, was fudging on its pledge to use no ground forces in Cambodia and to employ airpower only for "interdiction" of Communist supplies headed for South Viet Nam. In the House, 64 Democrats lined up behind a resolution to ban combat-support operations in Cambodia that require either air-or seapower. Only last month Congress passed legislative restrictions on the use of ground forces in Cambodia.
White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler conceded that U.S. air operations in Cambodia were now "different in scope and somewhat different in nature," but he denied that there had been any change in "the basic framework" of U.S. policy. State Department Spokesman John King smilingly told newsmen that Webster's International Dictionary (Third Edition) defines interdiction as "artillery fire or air attacks directed on a route or area to deny its use to the enemy." Example: Route 4.
Defense Secretary Melvin Laird was more blunt. Forget semantics, Laird said at a Pentagon press conference. Forget the word interdiction. Just call it "air support." He added: "As long as I am serving in this job, I will recommend that we use airpower." By that he meant everything from Cobra strikes to B-52 missions everywhere in Indochina.
The furor over air support sprang from the Cambodian operations, but it is the air war in Laos that has really grown intense. All but a handful of the 1,000 B-52 missions authorized by the Air Force each month in Indochina are now aimed at the Laos spur of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The pounding has pushed the "kill rate" of Communist trucks from an average of 100 a week to something approaching 500. As for combat support, there was no Admin istration denial when Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale charged that U.S. helicopters recently ferried 1,000 Thai troops into southern Laos.
Oil Slick. But Cambodia is now the center of attention, and the possibility exists that the U.S. will eventually be forced to step up the air war there. Not once in recent months has the Lon Nol regime's 160,000-man army been able to dislodge dug-in Communist troops without calling on U.S. air support. "What we will have to do," said a U.S. official, "is exactly what we did in Viet Nam in 1965—draw the population into the cities and large towns and then turn the rest of the country into a free-fire zone. It's the old oil-slick principle."
But would any new strategy require a new commitment of U.S. ground troops, in violation of congressional curbs and White House pledges? Not as far as Laird is concerned. "We will not—and I repeat it again, not—commit U.S. ground combat forces to Cambodia directly or indirectly," he said last week, not even if Cambodia were to fall. But at week's end Administration officials were emphasizing that a friendly regime in Phnom-Penh is essential to a smooth U.S. withdrawal from South Viet Nam. This week or next Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J.W. Fulbright will hold his first Indochina hearings since last fall, and he is sure to ask Laird and other witnesses the crucial question: How essential?