Dear Sir,

Graft, terror, children dragooned into the army, press-gagging,

battlefield atrocity, foot soldier contempt for political and military

leaders.

The chronicled sludge denigrates more than the string-pulling

CPP; it crunches the intellectuals, journalists and NGOs who from 1979 were

insistent the 'decent, honest, liberal, widely-loved CPP' be

internationally-recognized as Cambodia's government. Your reports cruelly

belittle their hopeless gush and disintegrate their fifteen-year stance that the

CPP is the bulwark against the genocidal hordes. Reality is that the CPP sources

Khmer Rouge regeneration, just as it did all through the 1980s.

Pilger,

Downie, Jennar, Myslwiec, Carpere, Kiernan and hangers-on propped delinquent

politicians and generals, which is exactly what they always sneeringly accused

Washington of.

Tackiness is their only consistency: they backed the Khmer

Rouge all through the 1970s gone; called the Vietnamese invasion a rescue

(becoming Pol Pot's noisiest critics in attempt to smother their tracks); and

from 1979 backed a regime that dripped with blood-soaked Khmer Reds every bit as

guilty of the killing fields as the others.

Khmer never wanted the Rouge

in 1975; the Western Left insisted. Khmer never wanted to be subjugated by

Vietnam; that lasted so long because the Western Left insisted. For years Khmer

have wanted the materially-honest Rouge back in the fold as watchdogs; the

Western Left insist the Rouge be crushed.

- Richard Briggs, Phnom

Penh