"We are afraid some American militarists may press for a
nuclear attack on China and we think that the American involvement in
Indochina is an insurance policy against such an attack because we will have
a lot of their flesh close to our nails.
"So the more troops they send to Vietnam, the happier we
will be, for we feel that we will have them in our power, we can have their
blood. So if you want to help the Vietnamese, you should encourage the
Americans to throw more and more soldiers into Vietnam.
"We want them there. They will be close to China. And
they will be in our grasp. They will be so close to us, they will be our
hostages. …
"Some of them are trying opium. And we are helping them.
We are planting the best kinds of opium especially for the American soldiers
in Vietnam. Do you remember when the West imposed opium on us? They fought
us with opium. And we are going to fight them with their own weapons. We are
going to use their own methods against them. We want them to have a big army
in Vietnam which will be hostage to us and we want to demoralize them. The
effect this demoralization is going to have on the United States will be far
greater than anyone realizes.
(Mohamed Heikal, The Cairo Documents, pp. 306 - 307)
