For a dissenting opinion on CORDs and pacification, I'd strongly recommend reading Eric Bergerud's The Dynamics of Defeat; the Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (Westview Press, 1991). Bergerud looks clsely at once province in Vietnam and assess that the pacification efforts could only, at best, achieve a mediocre tie with the VC and that the population, was never in a position to accept the GVN, even when the VC fighters were swept from the battlefield in the "better war" of the Abrams era.
For me Bergerud's book proves the point made by David Galula that the counterinsurgent must be armed with a better idea than the insurgent, and be able to sell that idea.