Old Eagle: Colby generally had good things to say about the Thieu government. I recall him crediting Thieu for understanding the importance of pacification, dedicating the appropriate assets to the CORDS effort (as best he could), coordinating the actions of military and regional and local forces, and continuously supervising regional and local leaders to make sure they were performing. I probably wrote "supervision works... inspect what you expect" 15-20 times throughout the book when Colby discussed Thieu's leadership style.

All things being equal, I think Colby would gladly take the Thieu government over Maliki's in Iraq today.

And as you suggest, this is definitely not a good thing 4 years into this war.