 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 the fact that they were the primary target; at that time, the MRC was moving toward removing Thơ, and Minh was the only senior general to retain confidence in him.
