The guts of Bush's message, the part that was read with greatest attention in Moscow,
Peking, and elsewhere, was contained in the following summary of the way in which
Haiphong and the other harbors had been mined:
"Accordingly, as the minimum actions necessary to meet this threat, the Republic of
Vietnam and the United States of America have jointly decided to take the following
measures of collective self-defense: The entrances to the ports of North Vietnam are
being mined, commencing 0900 Saigon time May 9, and the mines are set to activate
automatically beginning 1900 hours Saigon time May 11. This will permit vessels of
other countries presently in North Vietnamese ports three daylight periods to depart
safely." In a long circumlocution, Bush also conveyed that all shipping might also be the
target of indsicriminate bombing. Bush called these measures "restricted in extent and
purpose." The US was willing to sign a cease-fire ending all acts of war in Indochina
(thus including Cambodia, which had been invaded in 1970, and Laos, which had been
invaded in 1971) within four months, as well as the Vietnams) and bring all US troops
home within four months.
There was no bipartisan support for the bombing and mining policy Bush announced.
Senator Mike Mansfield pointed out that the decision would only protract the war.
Senator Proxmire called it "reckless and wrong." Four Soviet ships were damaged by
these US actions. There was a lively debate within the Soviet Politburo on how to
respond to this, with a faction around Shelest demanding that Nixon's invitation to the
upcoming Moscow superpower summit be rescinded. But Shelest was ousted by
Brezhnev, and the summit went forward at the end of May. The "China card"
theoreticians congratulated themselves that the Soviets had been paralyzed by fear what
Peking might do if Moscow became embroiled with Peking's new de facto ally, the US.
In July, 1972, reports emerged in the international press of charges by Hanoi that the US
had been deliberately bombing the dams and dikes, which were the irrigation and flood
control system around Vietnam's Red River. Once again it was Bush who came forward
as the apologist for Nixon's "mad bomber" foreign policy. Bush appeared on the NBC
Televison "Today" show to assure the US public that the US bombing had created only
"the most incidental and minor impact" on North Viet Nam's dike system. This, of
course, amounted to a backhanded conformation that such bombing had been done, and
damage wrought in the process. Bush was in his typical whining mode in defending the
US policy against worldwide criticism of war measures that seemed designed to inflict
widepsread flooding and death on North Vietnamese civilians. According to North
Vietnamese statistics, more than half of the north's 20 million people lived in areas near
the Red River that would be flooded if the dike system were breached. An article which
appeared in a Hanoi publication had stated that at flood crest many rivers rise to "six or
seve meters above the surrounding fields" and that because of this situation "any dike
break, especially in the Red River delta, is a disaster with incalculable consequences."
Bush had never seen an opportunity for genocide he did not like. "I believe we are being
set up by a massive propaganda campaign by the North Vietnamese in the event that
there is the same kind of flooding this year--to attribute it to bombs whereas last year it