as a political attempt to coax back non-communist dissidents and isolate those that were communists. The government rebuffed American proposals to bomb North Vietnam on the grounds that such actions would cede the moral high ground, which they claimed on the basis of fighting purely for self-defense. For their part, Minh and Thơ's leadership group believed that a more low-key military approach was needed for their political campaign against the insurgency. Minh and Thơ explicitly and bluntly turned down the bombing proposal in a 21 January meeting with US officials. Australian historian Anne E. Blair identified this exchange as sealing the regime's "death warrant". She pointed out that when the discussion was reported to Washington, the leading US generals in the U.S. military lobbied Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, claiming that it was no longer feasible to work within the parameters laid out by Saigon and that the U.S. should simply take control of anti-communist military policy, thereby necessitating a coup. The Americans became increasingly concerned with Saigon's reluctance to intensify the war effort, and bombing rebuff was regarded as a critical point. The government's plans to win over the NLF were never implemented to any degree before the government was deposed. Downfall The provisional government lacked direction in policy and planning, resulting in its quick collapse. The number of rural attacks instigated by the Viet Cong surged in the wake of Diệm's deposal, due to the displacement of troops into urban areas for the coup. The increasingly free discussion generated from the surfacing of new and accurate data following the coup revealed that the military situation was far worse than what was reported by Diệm. The incidence of Việt Cộng attacks continued to increase as it had done during the summer of 1963, the weapons loss ratio worsened and the rate of Viet Cong defections fell. The units that participated in the coup were returned to the field to guard against a possible major communist offensive in the countryside. The falsification of military statistics by Diệm's officials had led to miscalculations, which manifested themselves in military setbacks after Diệm's death. Aside from battlefield setbacks, something that was outside his remit, Thơ was also becoming unpopular in the military establishment. One of the goals of the various anti-Minh coup plots at the time was to remove Thơ, and the prime minister's unpopularity helped to distract some of the incumbent officers from