“Before the bombings, the Khmer Rouge were a marginal communist sect of perhaps 4,000 members. They opposed Cambodian premier, Lon Nol, an ally of the U.S. They used the fact of the U.S. bombings as a recruiting tool to build a national cadre of militant activists to overturn Nol’s government.

Chhit Do, a Khmer official, commented later, “Every time there was a bombing, we would take the people to see the craters. Sometimes they literally shit their pants. That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over.” Within five years the ranks of the Khmer Rouge had swelled to over 70,000.

Under the leadership of Pol Pot, one of the greatest murderers in history, the Khmer Rouge toppled the Cambodian government in 1975, thus beginning the Cambodian Genocide.”