Even the US govt reluctantly agreed that Operation Phoenix during the Vietnam War was little more than an "assassination squad". In fact, it was mandated by the blood thirsty Pres Johnson to combine CIA/US Military Intel commands under on group called Military Assistance Command For Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development. (ie.."Local Hit Teams") Led by Special Warfare Forces..then called Green Berets. Who was in command of the "Phoenix" Program? Well that would have been Brig Gen William A Knowlton, the Father in Law of General Petreus. Were Heinz & Tower & Laredo Flight 2574 "Pheonix" HITS?
By some estimates, the military/cia/cointelpro alphabet soup of commands that were killing civilians, willy nilly, in Nam actually killed more "innocent" personnel (such as "wedding Parties") than virtually all of the B-52 strikes and Chopper Hits and Agent Orange combined. How?
Simple...the program under Knowlton was to "Neutralize civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgence". Zorro is a "mid-centurion" so he remembers all this crap..but if you are a "new centurion"..the Viet Cong WERE the "Al Qaeda" of the day.
Neutralize just means "kill"..Civilian Infrastructure means...leave no structure right side up...towns or villages or airplanes. "Supported the Viet Cong" means, their mothers, their fathers, their sisters, their aunts, their grocers, their countrymen, their clergy, their hotels, their air lines...virtually ANYTHING that a Viet Cong touched was considered an "aid or support".
The "insurgency" word is very familiary to us again. Bush thinks he's fighting an "insurgency" when he is really fighting a "religion". But, screw the politics..let's talk military facts! Basically, any and all civilians were targets and could be neutralized at any time. To quote some military "wags"..."Collateral damage was not an operationally significant deterrent to strategic goals."
Translation...every body dies...who and when is up to Willam A Knowlton...aka (Body Bill)..was rewarded handsomely for his efforts at managing and keeping secret the deaths of 100,000 PLUS Vietnamese civilians. He became the Superintendent of West Point..so he could teach the rest of our boys and girls how to kill without mercy.
While (In)Sufferable Superintendent of West Point he met a young man whose "honcho" and "cahunya" were even bigger than his. A "wet-wet-kind of dung-ho" moron we all call General Betrayus". Knowlton and Betrayus got along SO well, that Knowlton sealed the perpetual dome of silence around Knowlton's head by marrying Knowlton's daughter.."holly".
If you want a great link and a great read on the Phoenix Program, PLEASE read THe Phoenix Program, by Douglas Valentine, William & Morrow, l990. But there is one thing that Valentine won't tell you..General Petraeus was shot by his own troop in the United States. He was shot in the Chest by a "trainer" at a "command facility" in Kentucky, Fort Bragg.
Despite the fact that Fort Bragg area has some of the finest military hospitals in the US...Petraeus was taken to Vanderbilt University to a Surgeon named "William Frist". "Bill Frist" also a US Senator, performed discreet surgery on Petraeus' Chest.
Frist's discretion at NEVER revealing the cause or nature of the wound was rewarded "handsomely"...he became the Majority Leader of the US Senate. Frist and his Father and Brother are famous for their "discretion". In return for the "family's" silence over the episode...his father was permitted to strip nearly $1,600,000,000 from the Medicare system.
My "years" may be off but the but you kind of wonder how Frist's family and Frist were let off the hook. Maybe there was something else Petraeus and Frist had in common. Let's see, Petraeus was shot on September 21, l991. In zorro code, that means he was a "player". 9/3/1991. What else happened in l991 that someone may have wanted to shoot Petraeus over...especially if he was "connected" with the US's largest "private/political" assassination monster...?
Let's see. Senator John Heinz who was on Bush's 3-man Fake team to investigate Iran-Contra was headed for a hearing in Philadelphia (40.07) on Medicare, Medicade and Tricare Fraud. That's what Frist's father was into..What's Tricare Fraud?...Why it's MILITARY INSURANCE FRAUD!
Who else was killed in that time frame..well let's see there was another Plane Crash in Brunswick George where someone "heart attacked Roosevelt". That was Senator John Tower..killed in a Plane Crash on April 5, l991. John Tower had also invested Iran-Contra and BCCI.
Actually, Reagan had appointed John Tower to look into the National Security Council's (NSC) handling of Iran Contra. Since Reagan, always thought Bush was behind his assassination atttempt..it would be perfect to ask another fellow texan to investigate "Bush's Role" in the NSC Iran Contra affair. Since Bush was the head of the NSC as Reagan's Vice President. just like he was instrumental during the Eisenhower admin and Nixon admin.
Bush couldn't allow that. As soon as Bush was elected President...Tower was gone. So was Tower's daughter "MARI-ANNE"...as in (Made Mari-anne?) and Astronaut NASA Navy Surgeon, Manley (Sonny) Carter.
Were there any OTHER plane crashes? Yes, there was the Crash of Continental Flight 2574 in Eagle Lake Texas. Yes, on September 11, l991, a plane took off from Laredo, Texas and disintegrated in mid air over Eagle Lake Texas. The Cause? The "Maintenance" company had failed to "screw the leading edge of the left wing, back onto the plane". Everybody was wondering about "Sabotage". Latitude 30.00
Who was on the Plane? Does it really matter? I mean, if your Bill Frist and you own a hospital and a Plane Crash Assassination Victim comes in..and the Govt reallyl wants them to die...would they survive? I mean, after all the US is in the business of killing civilians for political protecting in every other nation on earth...why not here?
So how do we know that Bush is starting up Operation Phoenix...other than Petraeus being connected with the Master Mind? Here..let's just read of few excerpts from the branch of the military that has Bush's ear...
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army-usawc/ksil241.pdf
(These are quotes from an assessment prepared by
USAWC STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT
FROM THE ASHES OF THE PHOENIX:
LESSONS FOR CONTEMPORARY
COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS
by
Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo
United States Army
Colonel (Ret) Robert Coon
Project Advisor
This SRP is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Strategic Studies Degree.
The U.S. Army War College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States
Association of Colleges and Schools, 3624 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, (215) 662-5606. The
Commission on Higher Education is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary
of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.
The views expressed in this student academic research paper are those of the author and do not reflect
the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S.
Government.
U.S. Army War College
CARLISLE BARRACKS, PENNSYLVANIA 17013
This paper argues that as part of its counterinsurgency effort against this threat, the
United States must neutralize the militant Islamic infrastructure (MI2) that enables the
insurgency’s global attacks. The paper provides an overview of the Phoenix Program, outlines
the nature of the current insurgent threat, and identifies critical strategic lessons from the
Vietnam experience that should be applied to a modern day Phoenix Program.
2
An initial attempt to unify the civilian effort under the Office of Civil Operations began in
November 1966. Headed by a deputy ambassador, it was a short-lived failure. Consequently,
in May 1967, President Johnson decided to unify all military and civilian pacification operations
under an organization called Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS), a
component of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV).10
OVERVIEW OF THE PHOENIX PROGRAM
MACV Directive 381-41, 9 July 1967, officially inaugurated the “Phoenix Program” as the
Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation for Attack on VC Infrastructure (VCI), with the short
title of “ICEX.” 11 By late 1967, MACV had replaced the innocuous name “ICEX” with “Phoenix,”
a translation of the South Vietnamese name for the program, “Phung Hoang.”12 Phoenix did not
initiate the attack on the VCI. Instead, it centralized existing efforts and raised the level of
attacks on the infrastructure to the mission of destroying NVA and VC main forces. Phoenix
embodied an understanding that insurgency principally represents a political struggle for
primacy between competing political ideas. The insurgency first seeks legitimacy, and then
supremacy for its political agenda in both the eyes of the populace and the outside world, while
the counterinsurgency struggles to deny such legitimacy.
An assessment published by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in early 1969 aptly
summarized the dynamic:
The struggle ... is in essence a struggle for political domination...The primary
issue is control over people...our adversaries have generally employed armed
force...primarily as a political abrasive intended to cow the population into
submission, collapse all political structures ... and erode the appetite for struggle
...the ultimate measure of success or failure will not be relative casualties ...
but—instead—whose political writ runs ... over the population of South
Vietnam.13
Over time, the Phoenix program generated negative press coverage, accusations that it
was a U.S. government sponsored-assassination program, and eventually a series of
Congressional hearings. Consequently, MACV issued a directive that reiterated that it had
based the anti-VCI campaign on South Vietnamese law, that the program was in compliance
with the laws of land warfare, and that U.S. personnel had the responsibility to report breaches
of the law.33 That directive described Phoenix operational activities as:
Operations...against the VCI...include: the collection of intelligence identifying
these members; inducing them to abandon their allegiance to the VC and rally to
the government; capturing or arresting them in order to bring them before
province security committees or military courts for lawful sentencing; and as a
final resort, the use of reasonable force should they resist capture or arrest
where failure to use such force would result in the escape of the suspected VCI
member or would result in threat of serious bodily harm to a member or members
of the capturing or arresting party.34
Clearly, the intent of these operations was not indiscriminate killing and assassination;
unfortunately, decentralized operations in an uncertain, ambiguous environment did lead to
abuses.35
(always read the end notes!)
Air Force Tech Sgt. Richard B. Fitzgibbon, Jr., who was murdered in
Vietnam by a fellow airman on June 8, 1956, is considered the first American officially to die in
the Vietnam War under these criteria.
zorro-fox-phoenix
is 40.07 and latitude 30...code for "Phoenix Program" in US politics?
Post new comment