United States - Operation Breakfast

From 1970 to 1973 a massive United States bombing campaign against the Khmer Rouge devastated rural Cambodia. An earlier U.S. bombing campaign of Cambodia actually started on 18 March 1969 with Operation Breakfast, but U.S. bombing in Cambodia started years earlier than that.

The number of Cambodian civilian and Khmer Rouge deaths caused by U.S. bombing is disputed and difficult to disentangle from the broader Cambodian Civil War. Estimates range from 30,000 to 500,000. Sliwinski estimates that approximately 17% of total civil war deaths can be attributed to U.S. bombing, noting that this is far behind the leading causes of death, as the U.S. bombing was concentrated in underpopulated border areas. Ben Kiernan attributes 50,000 to 150,000 deaths to the U.S. bombing.

Massacre: The cruel killing of a number of helpless or unresisting people.

Picket: Soldiers posted on guard ahead of a main force. Pickets included about 40 or 50 men each. Several pickets would form a rough line in front of the main army's camp. In case of enemy attack, the pickets usually would have time to warn the rest of the force.

Interior Lines: A military strategy which holds that the fastest, most efficient maneuvers, transportation and communication are conducted within an enclosed geographic area as opposed to outside the geographic area.

Ironclad: A ship protected by iron armor.

"Infernal Machine": A term of contempt for torpedoes (either the land or the water variety). This term was also used to describe the Confederate vessel H.L. Hunley- the first successful submarine.