Why Pol Pot was not killed like Osama bin Laden

Prominent US journalist Bernard Krisher, the publisher of The Cambodia Daily and a person very near to the modern Cambodian history, said on his own paper on May 4, 2011, that Pol Pot, the leader of the bloody Khmer Rouge regime, who died in the jungle in 1998, should have been killed like Osama bin Laden. He says ‘This did not happen but should have when Pol Pot was killing his people. The US had the ability at the time to determine where Pol Pot was based and should have sent in a team, as it did to kill Osama bin Laden.’ Krisher continues to explain why it did not happen: ‘The Nixon-Kissinger regime was focused on winning the war in Vietnam and went as far as bombing Cambodia in order to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail from supplying Vietnam with munitions.’

US-Cambodian negotiations on Lon Nol debt

On March 1970 General Lon Nol assumed the power in a troublesome Cambodia, moving prince Sihanouk from his position of head of state and putting Cambodia at the side of Washington. Technically it is not possible to say that Lon Nol introduced Cambodia in the War of Vietnam, because the situation was already unsustainable, but his goverment opened widely the doors to the worst Cambodian decades in the 20th century. He is so far in history the only president of a millennial kingdom. The Nixon’s administration, by its part, drop over Cambodia about 2,756,941 tons of bombs, a cost that historians like Kiernan and Taylor estimates in 7 billion US dollars. Besides it, the Lon Nol administration received from Washington a loan of 445 million US dollars for programs of agriculture and development in a country that was being bombarded ! Now US wants its loan back.

US navy ship arrived to Sihanoukville

A US navy ship arrived to Sihanoukville this weekend to celebrate military parades with the Royal Cambodian Army in the international sea port. The USS ESSEX touched the Cambodian coast during the morning of February 26 and was welcomed by high military authorities of the country. It will remain in Cambodian waters until March 2. Commander Ouck Seiha said to the press that it belongs to the agreements of friendship with the US military. CMDR Ly, the acting liaison officer between the US Navy and RCAF US, said that both navies will perform military games at the Sihanoukville Bay. US and Cambodia have strengthened relations of friendship in the last decades, after the troublesome times of war in the 1970s. The government of Richard Nixon ordered a heavy bombing over the northern Cambodian territory with the aim to stop the advance of the Vietcom. Damages over the Cambodian territory and its population due to such bombing in the 1970s are incalculable.

Chhin Sieng report.

Cambodia-US: Who Might Pays to Whom

The recent visit to Cambodia of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought out old ghost of the Cambodian history. We say ‘Cambodian history’, however, it belongs also to the US history in a very special way. The US Congress is enabling a new trade act for Cambodia under the code H.R. 5320. Now well, it happens that Congressmen Dana Rohrbacher and Bill Delahunt (find them in the collage I did with some prominent historical figures, down Lon Nol and at the side of Pol Pot) stated that ‘United States may not reduce or forgive any debt owed by Cambodia to the United States.’ (see csis.org.)