VC had already withdrawn from the battlefield, and the U.S. paratroopers were ordered to return to base without having engaged with the North Vietnamese. Background In January 1964, General Khánh ousted General Dương Văn Minh as the leader of South Vietnam's military junta in a bloodless coup. Although Khánh had made considerable efforts to consolidate his power, opposition to his rule began to grow as he tightened censorship laws, banned protests and allowed police arbitrary search and imprisonment powers. Khánh drafted a new constitution, which would have expanded his power within the military junta. In response to Khánh's political manoeuvres the South Vietnamese people, predominately Buddhists, held large demonstrations in the cities calling for an end to the draconian laws which had limited the people’s political freedom. Fearing that his power could be weakened by those demonstrations, Khánh immediately repealed his constitution and new police powers. He promised to reinstate civilian rule and remove members of the Catholic-based Cần lao from power. Internally, the concessions made by Khánh had the effect of unsettling Catholic officers such as Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and Trần Thiện Khiêm, because they were concerned by what they perceived to be the handing of power to Buddhist leaders. Subsequently, Khiêm fell out with Khánh over policy issues along religious lines, even though an alliance between both men had enabled Khánh to remove Minh from power. As military support for his regime diminished, Khánh had to rely upon civilian Buddhist activists to maintain power. For the Americans, Khánh's increased reliance on the Buddhists was a cause for concern, because the Buddhists favoured a political resolution to the conflict with the Communists. Thus, by the end of 1964 the Americans looked for someone to overthrow Khánh, in order to continue the military effort against the Communists. On February 20, 1965, Khánh was finally removed from power, and he was forced to leave South Vietnam. From the Communist perspective, even though South Vietnam was plagued by political instability, it still had a strong army to resist the VC. So shortly after the Binh Gia campaign, North Vietnamese leaders reached a resolution to launch a summer offensive, to destroy the regular units of the South Vietnamese military. During the early stages of the Communist summer campaign, VC forces in Quảng Ngãi Province successfully destroyed a South Vietnamese task force, led by the ARVN 51st Infantry Regiment, in the village of Ba