Cambodia was headed by Marshal Lon Nol, who had taken power in 1970, the year of the public
and massive US ground iVietnamese advanced on Saigon, the Lon Nol government was fighting for its life against the armedncursion into the country. By the spring of 1975, while the North (^)
insurrection of the Khmer Rouge communist guerillas, who were supported by mainland China.
Kissinger was as anxious as usual to serve the interests of Beijing, and now even more so, because
of the alleged need to increase the power of the Chinese and their assets, the Khmer rouge, against
the triumphant North Vietnamese. The most important consideration remained to ally with China,the second strongest land power, against the USSR. Secondarily, it was important to maintain the
balance of power in Southeast Asia as the US policy collapsed. Kissinger's policy was therefore to
jettison the Lon Nol government, and to replace it with the Khmer rouge. George Bush, as
Kissinger's liaison man in Beijing, was one of the instruments through which this policy was
executed. Bush did his part, and the result is known to world history undePot regime, which committed a genocide against its own population proportr the heading of the Polionally greater than any (^)
other in recent world history.
Until 1970, the government of Cambodia was led by Prince Sihanouk, a former king who had
stepped down from the throne to become prime minister. Despite his many limitations, Sihanoukwas then, and remains today, the most viable symbol of the national unity and hope for sovereignty (^)
of Cambodia. Under Sihanouk, Cambodia had maintained a measure of stability and had above all
managed to avoid being completely engulfed by the swirling maelstrom of the wars in Laos and in
Vietnam. But during 1969, Nixon and Kissinger had ordered a secret bombing campaign against
North Vietnamese troop concentrations on Cambodian territory undeThis bombing would have been a real and substantive grounds for the impeachment of Nixon, and itr the code name of "Menu." (^)
did constitute the fourth proposed article of impeachment against Nixon submitted to the House
Judiciary Committee on July 30, 1974. But after three articles of impeachment having to do with
the Watergate break-ins and subsequent coverup were approved by the committee, the most
important article, the one on genocide in Cambodia, was defeated by a vote of 26 to 12.
Cambodia was dragged into the Indo-China war by the US-sponsored coup d'etat in Phnom Penh on
March, 1970, which ousted Sihanouk in favor of Marshal Lon Nol of the Cambodian army, whose
regime was never able to achieve even a modicum of stability. Shortly thereafter, at the end of
April, 1970, Nthe use of Cambodian territory by tixon and Kissinger launched a large-scale US military invasion of Cahe North Vietnamese armed forces for their "Ho Chi Minh trail"mbodia, citing (^)
supply line to sustain their forces deployed in South Vietnam. The "parrot's beak" area of
Cambodia, which extended deep into South Vietnam, was occupied.
Prince Sihanouk, wseizure of power by Lon Nol. In May of 1970 heho described himself as a neutralist, established himself in Beijing after the became the titular leader and head of state of a (^)
Cambodian government in exile, the Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchea, or
GRUNK. The GRUNK was in essence a united front between Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge, with
the latter exercising most of the real power and commanding the armed forces and secret police.
Sihanouk was merely a figurehead, and he knew it. He told Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci in 1973that when "they [the Khmer Rouge] no longer need me, they will spit me out like a cherry pit."
During these years, the Cambodian Communist party or Khmer Rouge, which had launched a small
guerilla insurrection during 1968, was a negligeable military factor in Cambodia, fielding only a
very few thousand guerilla fighters. One of its leaders was Saloth Sar, who had studied in Paris, andwho had then sojourned at length in Red China at the height of the Red Guards' agitation. Saloth Sar (^)
was one of the most important leaders of the Khmer Rouge, and would later become infamous
under his nom de guerre of Pol Pot. Decisive support for Pol Pot and for the later genocidal policies
of the Khmer Rouge always came from Beijing, despite the attempts to misguided or lying
commentators (like Henry Kissinger) to depict the Khmer Rouge as a creation of Hanoi.