As a follow up to the radio show and after finishing Mr. Valentine's book 'The Phoenix Program' - I'm just giving the author and subject it's due, at least from my humble perspective, FWIW.
Like many, having grown up in that era with all the filters of history of those times; of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, of the excursions of the French, the meddling of the British and the activities of the U.S., both on screen and behind the scene, Douglas opens it up to a different level. This level was not hidden of mind, it was more in the way in how Douglas details the many layers of structures and operations; and that was difficult to keep focused on - the many war acronyms of groups and operations, of who controlled them and how they acted. How they acted is bone chilling in the extreme - the signature of a disease, of a dark pathological State and the minds that operate it from within. The abject virulence can be seen within the divisions between the military, intelligence, Washington and those on the opposite side in the Vietnamese government and society (or in other places as applicable). Taken with the words of Fletcher Prouty on this subject, along with some others, Valentin's book seemed to bring home the colossal criminal aspects that represented not only the war itself, but the systems used, such as Phoenix, along with who it was managed for and who benefited.
Valentine makes the Phoenix exposure (in the book numerous people are asked what they think it is) to that of a integrated management system - it becomes an Orwellian system that uses the antithesis of what it describes: when antiterrorism is the West's word for terrorism. When a civilian population becomes labeled and indistinguishable from those that they wage war against, when the de facto government they are propping up are bursting at the seams with corruption. When the police are the shakedown artists and criminals, when the shining stars of the war efforts to generate body counts, the PRU and their 'advisors' are like ISIS today; bred in prisons, funded and then trained by those who would dare to unleash these mercenary scourge, like a pox upon society.
Phoenix then was more or less the evolution of a management systems born from prior never-ending wars; computerization - neutral, some said, yet in certain hands it managed Gestapo tactics, psych-warfare, psyops, false labeling, false inputs and output data, crime syndication, international drug networks, corruption at all levels, military hardware and the slaughters it produces. The many intelligence apparatus's today, if not near all, represent the predators that will bust apart any country or people who do not play ball.
The evidence: masked humans like Dulles, Colby, North, Bush Sr., yet not to forget the international corrupted contagion - where in the last 70 years have they acted this out; Iran, Chili, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Korea, Guatemala, Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Africa, Philippines, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine...to name a few.
Valentine ends the book with his thoughts on when do we know when Phoenix is running - and he posits (it is worth a reading, especial as it was written years ago) a long list of social structure mechanisms where the police and information collection systems are working at the forefront right in front of ones eyes. An integrated system that operates for the exclusive use by others unbeknown even to the people who administer it. This program in its many forms, like the mythological Phoenix bird itself, keeps rising from the ashes born from pathological minds that will not leave humanity alone.
As has been discussed here on the forum, who needs aliens when a human disease is more than capable of creating such madness and depravity upon anyone the infected feel the urge to overthrow or dispose of.
It's rather depressing.
What a pickle we are in - goodness!
