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The U.S. backed up that victory with a simple pledge within the

Paris Peace Accords saying: should the South require any military

hardware to defend itself against any North Vietnam aggression we

would provide replacement aid to the South on a piece-by-piece,

one-to-one replacement, meaning a bullet for a bullet; a helicopter

for a helicopter, for all things lost – replacement. The advance of

communist tyranny had been halted by those accords.

Then it all came apart. And It happened this way: In August of the

following year, 1974, President Nixon resigned his office as a re-

sult of what became known as “Watergate.” Three months after his

resignation came the November congressional elections and within

them the Democrats won a landslide victory for the new Congress

and many of the members used their new majority to de-fund the

military aid the U.S. had promised, piece for piece, breaking the

commitment that we made to the South Vietnamese in Paris to pro-

vide whatever military hardware the South Vietnamese needed in

case of aggression from the North. Put simply and accurately, a ma-

jority of Democrats of the 94th Congress did not keep the word of

the United States.

On April the 10th of 1975, President Gerald Ford appealed directly

to those members of the congress in an evening Joint Session, tele-

vised to the nation. In that speech he literally begged the Congress to

keep the word of the United States. But as President Ford delivered

his speech, many of the members of the Congress walked out of the

chamber. Many of them had an investment in America’s failure in

Vietnam. They had participated in demonstrations against the war

for many years. They wouldn’t give the aid.

On April the 30th South Vietnam surrendered and Re-education

Camps were constructed, and the phenomenon of the Boat People

began. If the South Vietnamese had received the arms that the Unit-

ed States promised them would the result have been different? It

already had been different. The North Vietnamese leaders admitted

that they were testing the new President, Gerald Ford, and they took

one village after another, then cities, then provinces and our only

response was to go back on our word. The U.S. did not re-supply the

South Vietnamese as we had promised. It was then that the North

Vietnamese knew they were on the road to South Vietnam’s capital

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