The air war has yielded decidedly mixed military results as well.

By standard cost/benefit analysis the results have been rather meager. Such expenses as an estimated $100,000 per truck destroyed on the Ho Chi Minh trail show a rather inefficient use of resources. After an input of well over $3 billion, 1000 downed planes and 200 captured pilots, the communist insurgency is at least as strong as ever.

But wars, of course, are rarely evaluated by normal standards. It is clear that without the air war, the Pathet Lao would be in an even more formidable position than they are today. Bombing advocates within the CIA, Pentagon and State Department may well have been correct in arguing that only widespread bombing of civilian targets could maintain the American position in Laos.

An American official whose job brings him in daily contact with the-air war recently sketched the course of the bombings as described in these articles during a private conversation. At the end he exclaimed, "The problem is that we're on the defensive here. We have no real policy. All we can do is keep on bombing and killing. But how much longer can it last? What do we do if the Pather Lao get very much closer? Bomb Pakse, Savannakhet, or Vientiane?"

Copyright Dispatch News Service International