"Forty years may have passed since the last bomb was dropped, but it's never too late to do the right thing." Ambassador Douglas Hartwick (Washington Times, July 12, 2012)
In 1961, Laos became the main focus of America’s fight against the spread of communism. In an operation known as The Secret War, the CIA trained an army made up of mostly the Hmong ethnic minority in its war against the Pathet Lao (“Laos Nation”) who were supported by North Vietnam. The American Air Force was also involved. They heavily bombed Laos with an average of one air strike every eight minutes for a decade. By the time the campaign ended in 1973, one tenth of Laos’ population had been killed.
(A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military)