General Westmoreland, the American commander, had a variety of strategies he had conceived. His first strategy was to deploy the American troops to protect the U.S. air and supply bases along the South Vietnamese coast. He then would send units to block any attempt made by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong to sweep across to the sea and slice the country in

The Binh Xuyen, a Vietnamese Mafia was based in Cholon, the Chinese suburb of Saigon. Their leader was Bay Vien who controlled major brothels and casinos in Saigon. The Binh Xuyen also controlled much of Indochina's opium production. Corruption in South Vietnam reached new heights when the Binh Xuyen paid off Emperor Bao Dai, who made Bay Vien chief of police. The Binh Xuyen gang and its local Chinese confederates directed casinos, brothels, and opium dens and kicked in a percentage of the profits to Bao Dai. Narcotics developed heavily during the American war. By 1971, according to Pentagon estimates, nearly 30 percent of American troops in Vietnam had experimented with either opium or heroin, and quantities of drugs were also being exported to the United States.

One of the devices for channeling American assistance to South Vietnam was the "commercial import program," under which American imports were sold locally in order to generate the currency that would pay the expenses of the Saigon government's bureaucracy and army. Entrepreneurs had connections where they could obtain a license to import such merchandise as electrical equipment, motor scooters, and refrigerators, which were sold to the Vietnamese who were making profits from Americans. Prices started to skyrocket as soon as speculators hoarded imported American fertilizer and created artificial shortages. One of the great speculators was the brother-in-law of General Nguyen Van Thieu, who superseded Nguyen Cao Ky as South Vietnam's ruler. Ky was a piker compared to Thieu himself, who took millions of dollars in gold and fled Vietnam in April of 1975. In 1967, both Thieu and Ky ran for election. Thieu was named president on condition that Ky, who ran for vice-president, be named chairman of a secret military council empowered to shape government policy from behind the scenes.

Overall my honest opinion on this paper is negative. I thought the story pointed out a lot of information that isn't worth reading. I can care less about people doing drugs during Vietnam, the gangs in Vietnam, and Vietnam serving as a laboratory for technology. My examples are a lively narcotics traffic developed as well during the American was, the petty drug dealers often fronting for senior South Vietnamese government officials with access to heroin refined from opium grown in Laos.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1586
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)