Agh! And just when I thought I'd seen the last of my old nemesis, General Vang Pao, leader of the Hmong rebel army in central Laos, he strikes agian!

Or... almost. Don't you hate it when, on the eve of your coup d'etat, your mercenary army gets arrested by the ATF?

Somehow it seems like this would make an interesting movie, or an even better Frederick Forsyth novel!

You've also got to love the inclusion of "Harison Ulrich Jack"... a mercenary with three first names? Classic!

Thanks for the head up. I had missed this one. It certainly is interesting.

I'm guessing that the reason it received little play here or in the media is that it does not fit the preconceived notion of the US as an interventionist machine. Now if the US had been behind the plot rather than halting it.....

My brother, who has closer connections to Laos than I do, was really pissed. General Vang Pao was our guy, we trained him and funded him. The government there is pretty shifty, and they oppress the hell out of the Hmong.

If this is the new US policy on insurgency against dictatorships, then I really hope they apply it across the board. Otherwise, there's no point to all this.

They stopped it because they don't want start fires they can't handle in the region. I don't see any arrest against Cuban exiles when they launch raids against Cuba or when they train in the Florida and Georgia swamps.

Besides, if you want to launch am insurgency, you don't want it from your own soil, its traceable and messy.