Be careful what you read about Phoenix. There are a lot of bogus stories out there.
- It was a Vietnamese, not US, operation (with US advisors).
- It was not meant to assassinate, but to capture and interrogate, enemies.
- Far from being secret, it had a kickoff press conference with a US Ambassador (Komer) and high ranking RVN officials!
- Douglas Valentine's book is all bullshit (most of his "SEALS", etc. that gave him info, are phonies)
- Dale Andrade's book is almost completely accurate.
- there were no mass killings, annihilated villages, etc.
- it was effective. The VC were already hurting -- TET 68 decimated them, and their auxiliary and underground supporters. After that, the VC were combat ineffective. What Phung Hoang did was put the guerilla eyes of the NVA out, so when it invaded it was basically a combined arms invasion w/o significant guerilla/underground support (1972 and 1975 both).
Be really leery about stuff you read about special ops forces in Vietnam, especially SEALs. If you read something that sounds dodgy, check out authentiseal (forget if it's .org or .com), they can tell you if someone is on the up and up in jig time.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Thanks for the heads up.
Information is hard to came by in this world. I know a guy at work who is a Kurd and he LOVES America and the fact that we went after SH. It's hard for me to get a real sense of what's going on in Iraq, but if the number of attacks is less than 40 a day that seems consistant with relative STABILITY. However...if most of our troops are hunkered down than it may not indicate that.
Again thanks for the detailed post.
Jeff