Vietnam War Era-style "Phoenix" Assassination Program Implemented in U.S.-Occupied Iraq

Interview with Douglas Valentine, author of "The Phoenix Program," conducted by Scott Harris

Despite the capture of Saddam Hussein, the insurgency challenging U.S. occupation forces in Iraq continues. Suicide bombings and assaults on American led coalition troops and their Iraqi allies took the lives of 19 in Karbala, a city holy to Shiite Muslims, over the Christmas holiday.

According to the Pentagon, the U.S. counteroffensive against guerrillas attacking occupation troops -- code-named "Operation Iron Hammer" -- has been successful in capturing weapons and arresting some of those accused of organizing resistance. But investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in a recent New Yorker magazine article, that another American covert operation is targeting for assassination members of the deposed Ba'athist regime and other civilians thought to support the insurgency.

This secret operation described as "pre-emptive manhunting" -- run according to Hersh by the U.S. Army's Special Forces -- is strikingly similar to the Vietnam-era CIA-run Phoenix Program that assassinated more than 25,000 political supporters of the Communist insurgency fighting to topple the U.S. supported South Vietnamese government. This revelation comes not long after Max Boot of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a New York Times editorial in November advocating that the U.S. adopt illegal assassination operations like Phoenix in Iraq. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Douglas Valentine, author of the book "The Phoenix Program," who discusses America's counterinsurgency program in Iraq and the parallels with the CIA's covert assassination operations during the Vietnam War.

Investigative journalist Douglas Valentine is author of the book "The Phoenix Program." Read Valentine's articles online by visiting his website at www.douglasvalentine.com

Related links:

"Preemptive Manhunting: The CIA's New Assassination Program," by Douglas Valentine, www.Counterpunch.org, Dec. 11, 2003

"Moving Targets," by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Dec. 15, 2003

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