began using him to gain support. However from 1970 until early 1972 the Cambodian conflict was largely one between the government and army of Cambodia, and the armed forces of North Vietnam. As they gained control of Cambodian territory the Vietnamese communists imposed a new political infrastructure, which was eventually dominated by the Cambodian communists we now refer to as the Khmer Rouge. So the Vietnamese communists played a vital role in the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
Between 1969 and 1973, Republic of Vietnam forces and U.S. forces bombed and briefly invaded Cambodia in an effort to disrupt the Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge. Some two million Cambodians were made refugees by the war and by the terrorist policies of the Khmer Rouge, and fled to Phnom Penh. Estimates of the number of Cambodians killed during the bombing campaigns vary widely, as do views of the effects of the bombing. The U.S. Seventh Air Force argued that the bombing prevented the fall of Phnom Penh in 1973 by killing 16,000 of 25,500 Khmer Rouge fighters besieging the city. However, journalist William Shawcross and Cambodia specialists Milton Osborne, David P. Chandler and Ben Kiernan argued that the bombing drove peasants to join the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia specialist Craig Etcheson argued that the Khmer Rouge "would have won anyway", even without U.S. intervention driving recruitment. American diplomat Timothy M. Carney argued that the five reasons why Pol Pot won the war were: support from Sihanouk, massive supplies of military aid from North Vietnam, government corruption, the U.S. cut-off in air support after Watergate, and the determination of the Cambodian Communists. Not one of them in his opinion was the U.S. bombing.
Khmer Republic (1970-1975)
This section requires expansion. (July 2012)
Khmer Rouge regime
Main articles: Democratic Kampuchea and Khmer Rouge
As the Vietnam War ended, a draft USAID report
