Excerpts from The Pol Pot Journal – soon to be realeased

Journal entry Pol:

Our first year was going well. The first big snag came when an American ship called the Mayagüez came through our waters. We boarded and searched it as we did all other ships. If nothing unusual is on them we let them go. I no sooner gave the order to release the ship when US President Gerald Ford decided to make an issue of this thing and send in his marines. They crashed one of their own aircraft and killed around 25 of their own men. They killed several of our soldiers and sunk one of our navy ships. We never had a big navy to begin with. This was all done so Ford could look like a macho cowboy to his own people. The 100 or so deaths were completely unnecessary.
Still we were worried about further attacks and had to move our entire headquarters to a Silver Pagoda on the edge of town. The Pagoda was alright but although it was large enough for us, there were fewer rooms. Once again some of us lost our privacy and our own offices. This building just didn’t have enough rooms.



Newstimes:

May 26, 1975:

"Have been fired on and boarded by Cambodian armed forces. Vessel being escorted to unknown Cambodian port."

It was a crackling distress call over the radio waves from the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez in the Gulf of Siam last week that got the Gerald Ford Administration rolling into action. Ford was determined to change the image of U.S. power in the world—and his own stature. He put up U.S. military might and successfully forced the Cambodians to surrender the ship and free the 39-man crew.
Ford acted firmly and decisively, more than at any other time in his presidency. The Ford Administration wanted to draw a line in the sand to let adversaries around the world know that despite the setbacks in Indochina, the US was not going to be intimidated. This action was seen as necessary to reassure some disillusioned allies that the U.S. intends to vigorously defend its oversees interests. Fords wanted allies to see that he not only used force but plenty of it. Ford used the navy, Air Force and assault troops. He used warships, helicopters. Some at home thought the John Wayne show of force was excessive. One reporter described it as shooting a chicken with a cannon ball.
By drawing the line against aggression in the Mayaguez incident, he put potential adversaries on notice that despite recent setbacks in Indochina and the Middle East, the U.S. is not a paper tiger. That action reassured some discouraged and mistrustful allies that the U.S. intends to defend vigorously its overseas interests. But the events of the week also raised a series of questions that are bound to be debated in the U.S. and in foreign capitals for months to come.
Ford showed that in a confrontation he was not only willing to risk using military force but also that, once committed, he would use plenty of it. Thus, to free one freighter and not quite two score crewmen, the President called out the Marines, the Air Force and the Navy. He ordered assault troops—supported by warships, fighter-bombers and helicopters—to invade a tiny island of disputed nationality where the crewmen were thought (erroneously) to be held. To prevent a Cambodian counterstrike, he ordered two much disputed bombing raids of the Cambodian mainland. At home and abroad, some political experts thought that the show of force, which had many of the gung-ho elements of a John Wayne movie, was excessive. The Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun asked, "Why did [the U.S.] have to use a cannon to shoot a chicken?"
Hard kick. The cannon was effective, of course, showing the world that the U.S. will not accept humiliating provocations. But the U.S. success owed almost as much to luck as to skill in combat. If the Communist Cambodians had dug in and refused to release the Mayaguez crew, the military mission might well have aborted.
In an interview with the staff of Newtimes, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger admitted: "The outcome was fortunate." Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently called for an "abrasive" foreign policy, even before the Cambodians seized the Mayaguez. One U.S. Government policy planner had told Newtimes, "There's quite a bit of agreement around here that it wouldn't be a bad thing if the other side goes a step or two too far in trying to kick us while we're down. It would give us a chance to kick them back—hard."
President Ford had been hoping for weeks to find a dramatic way to demonstrate to the world that the Communist victories in Indochina had not turned the U.S. into a second rate power……