ericans agreed with Nixons move in sending the troops into Cambodia. However many other polls stated that there was a widespread questioning of the operation. It was however not due to forgery of the results, that the White House poll results differed so much from other results, but it was the wording of the questions which gave such high results in favour of the president. The White House polls would for instance ask interviewees Do you support the presidents action to end the war in Vietnam, to avoid getting into war with Cambodia, to protect U.S. troops? Most answers would be yes even though these people didnt support the idea of the U.S. not sending troops home. In this way the White House seemingly got more support form the public. In reality the general public opinion was becoming worse for Nixon because of his prolonging of the war. He was loosing face, and when the new elections were coming up, he needed the publics support back. To achieve this he continued with the withdrawals of troops, offered new peace terms and exposed the fact that Henry Kissinger had been conducting secret negotiations with North Vietnam in Paris. The withdrawal of troops made the remaining U.S. and South Vietnamese troops vulnerable to attack. Nixon stood for a difficult choice, either withdraw all American troops and let the South Vietnamese defence crumble, or authorise a massive attack. His second option however might cause public of America to loose all trust in him. Nixon decided to go for the last option. He went through with the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of the Port of Haiphong. Polls with the American public, against all expectations, came out positive. The reason for this might have been that during these bombings, Nixon was continuing with withdrawing troops. The bombardments were from the air, so there was little chance of American soldiers getting injured. In 1972 Nixon was re-elected. It was very clear though that public patience on V...
