Title:  U.S. MILITARY PLANNING FAILED VIETNAM WAR TACTIC TO TRY TO REVERSE DEFEAT: SENDING ELITE ASSASSINATION SQUADS AMONGST THE PEOPLE

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Subtitle: Trying to stave off defeat in Vietnam, a most deadly and controversial program called the "Phoenix Program" was instituted. Even though the stated goal was to assassinate friends and cohorts of the Viet Cong enemy, most of all dead were innocent civilians, turning the hearts of the Vietnam people against us.

Apparently, a new "Phoenix Program" is being instituted in Iraq! Will the results be the same as in Vietnam?

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THE CUTTING EDGE

Copyright © 2004 Cutting Edge Ministries. All rights reserved. See full copyright notice below.

 

PHOENIX REBORN?

In the past 12 months, many articles have been posted by a wide variety of commentators and former Special Forces forces who served in Vietnam which have pointed out the increasingly great similarities between this current Iraq War and the Vietnam War. These types of articles have increased dramatically in past months, and we have posted them in our Daily News Updates, our Headline News articles, and our Weekly Newsletters.

During this past week, we posted an article which demonstrated once again that our military learns nothing from the past, as we seem to be on the verge of creating a new assassination squad in Iraq similar to the "Phoenix Program" in Vietnam -- even though the Phoenix assassination program probably did more to turn the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people against us than any other single action we undertook during the 13 years of war!

Let us begin by viewing the current news article.

NEWS BRIEF: "‘The Salvador Option’: The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq", MSNBC News, By Michael Hirsh and John Barry, Newsweek, Jan. 9, 2005

"Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called 'the Salvador option'—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. 'What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are', one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. 'We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing'. Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking 'the back' of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out."

This is the first public admission in a standard American Mass Media outlet that the battle of Fallujah was less than complete. Every other article I have seen from American news shouts the wonderful success of our destruction of Fallujah. Now, we understand that some American units are currently fighting again in parts of Fallujah. As we destroyed the infrastructure of the city and killed many of its civilians, we simply spread the insurgency because we angered so many Iraqi people. The more brutal the Coalition Forces get in its methods, the more it breeds new insurgency fighters. Since the pre-war population of Iraq, was over 25 million, the insurgency can count upon a seemingly endless supply of recruits -- men whose hearts and minds were set to fight because of American actions.

So much for the much ballyhooed mantra that we must "win the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people!

Now, let us return to this featured article:

"Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported 'nationalist' forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal."

In US Army Intelligence, I learned that, when I read in the news that the Pentagon was "considering" an action, the reality was that it had been carrying out this action for quite some time and the only reason the story was breaking was because the time had arrived to tell the American public the story according to the slant the government wanted to give it. This understanding would lead me to believe this assassination program is already in place and has been for some time.

Why do I believe this assassination program is already in place?

In August, 2002, we posted NEWS1691, from The Guardian (London) in which President Bush had given the authority to elite American assassination squads to begin killing Al-Qaeda leaders as an integral part of the "War On Terror". Since the President has many times stated that the war in Iraq represents the front line in the global war on terror, you can safely believe that our assassination squads have been very active since we invaded that land. Let us review this original Guardian article.

NEWS BRIEF: "US Considers Summary Execution Assassination Squads", by By Oliver Burkeman in New York, The Guardian - London, 8-14-2002.

"The US government is considering plans to send elite military units on missions to assassinate al-Qaida leaders in countries around the world, without necessarily informing the governments involved, it was reported yesterday. The Pentagon is discussing proposals which could see special operations units dispatched to capture or kill terrorists wherever they are believed to be hiding, despite a long-standing presidential order forbidding US personnel from carrying out assassinations abroad, the New York Times reported ... The soldiers who would be used in any such plan are the army's secretive Delta Force and the navy's Seal unit."

An editor of an alternate news source searched the Internet and discovered corroborating evidence that this Guardian story was absolutely correct. We encourage you to read this story on NEWS1691, for it is very informative as to the true nature of this administration.

Therefore, President Bush authorized "elite military units" to begin assassinating al-Qaeda leaders throughout the world in August, 2002, nine months before he ordered the invasion of Iraq (March 20, 2003). We have plenty of reason to believe that our assassination squads have been very active in Iraq since then. In fact, the scuttlebutt in Iraq is that some of the assassinations of clerics -- both Sunni and Shi'ite -- have been Coalition hits designed to make the kill look like the other side carried it out.

Before we return to our featured Newsweek article, above, let us reiterate one of the noted results of this assassination program in El Salvador: "the deaths of innocent civilians".

Whenever any government of any era in history undertakes the role of cop-judge-jury, innocent people get killed. Our Founding Fathers were so sick and tired of this tactic that they created a form of Representative Republic which operated according to a strict Constitution and Bill of Rights, which was split into three functions of government (Executive, Judicial, Legislative) so that no one part of government could usurp the powers of the others and turn this country into dictatorship. However, under the relentless manufactured threat of the Cold War, and under the equally manufactured threat of terrorism since 9/11, the Executive branch has been usurping power from the other two, to the point now where the President can wield the kind of dictatorial power not seen since the days of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler!

Now, let us return to this Newsweek article:

"The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option. Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, may have been laying the groundwork for the idea with a series of interviews during the past ten days ... he named three former senior figures in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein’s half-brother—were essentially safe across the border in a Syrian sanctuary. 'We are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian and Iraqi territories', he said, adding that efforts to extradite them 'have not borne fruit so far'." (Ibid.)

This article did not stipulate whether the level of "certainty" that these Hussein operatives were operating in Syria approached the level of certainty before our invasion that Saddam possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction which he could fire on missiles within 45 minutes -- a charge now admitted to be a "massive intelligence failure".

Now, let us return to this Newsweek article:

"Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, 'are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them'. He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in."

This article goes on to say that such an operation as this assassination option is designed to "create fear" in the hearts of the people, so they will not support the insurgency anymore. The reality is that such an assassination program kills so many innocent people that the hearts of the civilians are not made to tremble with fear but shake with hatred. The key weakness is that the insurgency can easily finger people whom they know are innocent and whom they know the general public will know are innocent, knowing these "elite assassination teams" will carry out the murder; further, they will finger their enemies (Coalition supporters), thus weakening the very government which this operation is trying to strengthen.

This sad tale happened in Vietnam and will happen in Iraq. In fact, the beginning of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam marked the "beginning of the end" of the American battle to "win the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese civilians. Let us now examine the disastrous results of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, as seen through the eyes of one of President Lyndon Johnson's advisers, Congressman Gallagher.

 

Operation Phoenix and COINTELPRO

"... atrocities in Vietnam, perpetrated, not by the Viet Cong, but by CIA agents." [Pages 121-139]

"As 1964 ended, Congressman Gallagher aggressively promoted the three cornerstones of Lyndon Johnson's presidency: the great society, civil rights, and a strong stand against Communism in Vietnam ... Despite his backing of LBJ's Vietnam policy intellectually, there was ugliness erupting. By mid-1965, photos of college-age protesters being led away in handcuffs painted the front pages ... Even more perplexing, during visits to camps outside Saigon, as chairman of Asian Affairs, Gallagher had begun hearing rumors, disturbing and lurid, about atrocities in Vietnam, perpetrated, not by the Viet Cong, but by CIA agents. Disguising themselves as the enemy, Gallagher learned, they would rampage through peasant villages at night, raping women and executing their husbands ... Then there was the matter of telephone harassments of the families of soldiers fighting in Vietnam ... Gallagher later discovered that the callers had been government agents and that he had had his first encounter with two of the CIA / FBI's darkest, most clandestine initiatives: Operation Phoenix and COINTELPRO."

"During the course of conversations with several young officers, one of them wondered aloud if some of the things the U.S. was doing to win the conflict were right or effective. He mentioned that people, soldiers ... believed to be loyal in the villages, and whom they counted on in the day, often didn't make it through the night. The next morning, when they went back to those villages, their friends would be murdered, often in the most horrible ways."

" 'Well, that ought to prove that the Viet Cong was pretty active', Gallagher said."

" 'No, you don't understand', the officer replied. 'Not the Viet Cong. Us. The CIA. We're sending in assassination teams'."

" 'What? Why would they be doing that?"

"Because someone had identified them as Cong operatives".

"The story stayed in Gallagher's mind and when he returned to Saigon that night and had a drink with some of the reporters at the Nationale Hotel, he first heard the name Operation Phoenix. Gallagher immediately demanded a meeting with the station chief in Vietnam at the time. He told Gallagher that it was a program to kill the inhabitants of villages of untrustworthy Viet Cong leaders who claim to be friends."

" 'What if the reverse is true?' Gallagher asked. 'What if the Viet Cong are fingering those guys who are really our allies and we're in there killing them? I mean, how much of this is going on?" The answer from the station chief was "Quite a bit".

"Gallagher was soon convinced that this was a massive campaign both in scope and brutality that was responsible by then for the murders of thousands of South Vietnamese citizens. Of course, he discussed the subject with Rusk and Johnson immediately upon his return to Washington. It was not until years later, however, while serving time in Schuykill Prison, that Gallagher would come into possession of a document from a fellow inmate who was himself an assassin during the Phoenix Program ..."

"In 1965 the United States set a goal for the Phoenix Program to neutralize 20,000 agents during the year, and at the end of that year, 19,534 agents were reported neutralized. The figure was unsettling in that there had been no corresponding decline in American estimates of agents at large."

This last sentence should tell you all you need to know about this Phoenix Program. Instead of killing "agents", the vast majority who were "neutralized" were just plain, ordinary citizens, many of whom were sympathetic to the American war effort, a fact well known in the village in which the victim lived. When a civilian was killed after demonstrating friendliness to American soldiers and/or taking actions on their behalf, a Viet Cong operative would slip the word anonymously to the Americans that that person was friendly during the day, but a Viet Cong agent at night. An elite American assassination team would murder the poor man during the night, many times raping his wife first, as noted above.

This was the true face of the American war effort in Vietnam! Now, let us return to "The Privacy War" for more information.

Gallagher asked for, and received, a personal meeting with President Lyndon Johnson.

"... frankly, Mr. President, from what I've seen, it doesn't look good. The energy and persistence of the Viet Cong is astonishing. They can appear anywhere and at almost any time. They've accepted extraordinary losses and they come back for more ... That's one of the reasons I needed to see you, Mr. President. Do you know anything about the Phoenix Program going on outside the camps, in the villages?"

"Phoenix?" The President thought for a moment. "Yeah, one of those CIA schemes, isn't it? Protect the loyal villagers from VC subversion or something like that. Why are you asking?"

"... on the one hand, Mr. President, we talk about winning the minds and hearts of these people and on the other, we're sending out teams of assassins to kill people we're not even sure are our enemy." The President was furious.

"We can't have that going on, and I'll see to it that those operations are stopped immediately".

"Later that month, General Westmoreland did get his forty-four battalions of ground troops, bringing the total number up to 180,000. McNamara did get his saturation bombing ... And the CIA, despite orders to the contrary, continued its efforts to purify South Vietnam of enemy agents, until 1972, arresting, torturing, and killing more than 80,000 South Vietnamese citizens before the Phoenix operation was finally terminated."

You have to understand that, just as the liquidation of 19,534 "agents" in South Vietnam in 1965 did not drop the number of "agents" in the country, neither did the total of 80,000 citizens who had been killed by 1972 -- just months before America got out of the country by turning the country over to the wretched South Vietnamese government, military and secret police. When we exited Vietnam, we left behind a huge reservoir of hatred toward Americans and their"lackeys" -- the South Vietnam politicians and soldiers. The North Vietnamese discovered the pickings to be easy when they attacked in 1973, totally and easily collapsing the government.

The same will occur in Iraq. We have probably been murdering civilians under this "War On Terror" campaign since President Bush signed the directive in mid-August, 2002.

However, we have to note one difference between President Johnson and President Bush. Apparently, the CIA had lied to Johnson about the true nature of the Phoenix Program, whereas President Bush boldly and knowingly instituted the current assassination program.

 

How did our Green Beret elite soldiers view the Phoenix Program? After all, Green Berets were specifically trained to work in small units within the South Vietnamese villages and towns, completely actions that truly would "win the hearts and minds" of the people to the American cause. Green Berets built schools, hospitals, and recreational facilities. They would also train a local para-military force to protect the village, thus freeing up tens of thousands of regular army troops -- both American and South Vietnamese -- so they could attack regular Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units. How did these troops view the Phoenix Program?

In this conflict, top American commanders, beginning with General Westmoreland, really had no faith in our counterinsurgency program being carried out in the early part of the conflict by our Special Forces troopers. Even with statistics abounding showing that communities which had been pacified by an effective, ongoing Special Forces operation were much more secure than those communities without such a program, Westmoreland set in motion a plan to gradually reduce, and finally eliminate, the counterinsurgency effort. If ever there was an effort to 'win the hearts and minds of the people', this Special Forces program in Vietnam represented the highest pinnacle of that effort.

As our counterinsurgency program was winding down, American commanders turned increasingly to the special "Phoenix Assassination" program which killed several tens of thousands of innocent civilians as a means by which to root out "Viet Cong sympathizers" within the civilian population. The major problem with "Phoenix" is that many more innocent civilians were killed than real sympathizers.

Special Forces officer, Daniel Marvin, relates his confrontation with the American in charge of the assassinations in the Phoenix Program:

"It was five months earlier that I'd refused Mackem's counter-terrorist (CT) team entry into An Phy District. It was somewhat confrontational. I'd even penned a note as part of my continuing effort to document a kind of 'insurance policy for me', telling of my distrust of Mackem and the whole business of CT teams operating under the auspices of the Phoenix Program. We didn't need strangers in our midst who would make independent judgments without consulting local authority and who would imprison or assassinate whomever they determined to be VC sympathizers." ( "Expendable Elite", Daniel Marvin, p. 259)

In place of this successful Green Beret Special Forces campaign, American commanders resorted to the heavy application of conventional tactics, using firepower and movements of troops. Inexperienced American soldiers arriving in Vietnam fresh from the United States were subjected to a population who hated their guts and who resorted to children and grandparents blowing themselves up once they got close enough to G.I.'s. American soldiers quickly came to the point where they regarded every single South Vietnamese civilian as the enemy, resulting in numerous instances where civilians were massacred; the slaughter at My Lai was not unusual in that wretched war.

Our heavy-handed tactics and our "Phoenix Program" lost the "hearts and minds" of the civilians we had been sent it to "save" from Communism. Coalition Forces are slipping down the same slippery slope in Iraq. This admission of the assassination program in Iraq is probably the same sign of defeat it was in South Vietnam.

CONCLUSION

We can now see the true, horrific face of our effort in Iraq. It is no more moral than our effort in Vietnam; further from the beginning, we warned that this war also seemed to like Vietnam in that we never planned on winning it. Furthermore, we can now trace the same CIA draconian program of assassination of civilians under the guise of "neutralizing enemy combatants", through three wars:

* Vietnam War -- called Phoenix Program -- Presidents Johnson and Nixon

* El Salvador -- called "The El Salvador Operation" -- President Reagan

* Iraq -- unnamed as yet -- President Bush

Therefore, we see the same failed program being carried out by the administrations of four (4) American Presidents. Through four changes of administration, the same assassination program has been carried out. This, folks, fills the definition of "conspiracy" as put forth over 200 years ago by President Thomas Jefferson. Listen to his wise words:

"... a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." ["The Unseen Hand", by A. Ralph Epperson, p. 196]

If we are really sending elite Kurdish special forces to kill Iraqi "insurgents", we are risking a terrible blow-up in civil war, for everyone in Iraq -- and the Middle East for that matter -- hates the Kurds and wants them dead. If our intent is to lose this war and to unify both Sunni and Shi'ite parties against us, we could not take any action more effective than to unleash Kurdish killers against the Iraqi civilian population.

We now have one more parallel to the hated Vietnam War: unleashing "elite forces" to kill civilians on the thin premise that they are "enemy combatants" -- also known as "insurgents". We shall arrive at the end of this sorry campaign against the civilian population at the same place we arrived in Vietnam, after nearly a decade of aggressively carrying out the "Phoenix Program". Will 80,000 Iraqi civilians die at the hands of these elite assassination forces, thus setting up another Vietnam parallel? We shall have to wait to see; however, we already know that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have already perished, but we thought this number occurred by the forces of war. Have many of them died at the hands of our elite assassination squads?

Truly, the horror of the Iraq War simply increases exponentially!

End of the Age prophecy is being fulfilled in our Daily News!

"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines and calamities. This is but the beginning of the intolerable anguish and suffering, only the first of the birth pangs." (Mark 13:8; Parallel Bible, KJV/Amplified Bible Commentary]

Who is prophesied to be "born" on the world scene when these "intolerable birth pangs" are completed? Antichrist! The Illuminati takes note of this "birth pangs" prophecy and has concocted a plan to wage three world wars which will produce their Antichrist. The last of these three world wars was to begin in the Middle East, as Israel battles her Arab enemies. You can see the scene being set right now as Israel separates her population from the Palestinian (NEWS1422 and NEWS1620).

However, the Illuminati planned the Iraq War to so inflame Arabic passions against anything Western -- including Israel -- so that, when Israel goes to war against the Palestinians and her Arab neighbors, the entire Middle Eastern region flames into war. Every atrocity we commit against Iraq just makes that goal more attainable.

Truly, the End of the Age draws near.

Are you spiritually ready? Is your family? Are you adequately protecting your loved ones? This is the reason for this ministry, to enable you to first understand the peril facing you, and then help you develop strategies to warn and protect your loved ones. Once you have been thoroughly trained, you can also use your knowledge as a means to open the door of discussion with an unsaved person. I have been able to use it many times, and have seen people come to Jesus Christ as a result. These perilous times are also a time when we can reach many souls for Jesus Christ, making an eternal difference.

If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, but have been very lukewarm in your spiritual walk with Him, you need to immediately ask Him for forgiveness and for renewal. He will instantly forgive you, and fill your heart with the joy of the Holy Spirit. Then, you need to begin a daily walk of prayer and personal Bible Study.

If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, but have come to realize His reality and the approaching End of the Age, and want to accept His FREE Gift of Eternal Life, you can also do so now, in the privacy of your home. Once you accept Him as Savior, you are spiritually Born Again, and are as assured of Heaven as if you were already there. Then, you can rest assured that the Kingdom of Antichrist will not touch you spiritually.

If you would like to become Born Again, turn to our Salvation Page now.

We hope you have been blessed by this ministry, which seeks to educate and warn people, so that they can see the coming New World Order -- Kingdom of Antichrist -- in their daily news.

Finally, we would love to hear from you.

You can contact us by mail or email.

God bless you.

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