> I can't remember whether the Phoenix
> program was just set up to "eliminate" NLF local leaders, or whether
> it was also responsible for herding the Vietnamese peasantry into
> concentration camps called "protected villages".
Both, Operation Phoenix was an umbrella for a number of smaller ops.
Strategic hamlets... That what they claim the Marines are supposed to be doing in outback Iraq, although they aren't calling it that. It implies living with the locals, or close by, and it's really unlikely to have been actualized under the current circumstances, unless you consider holing up in a bunker to be "living with or close by".
Operation Phoenix terrorised the village leaders into cooperating(or die). Tailwind was looking for NLF and US deserters in the more remote villages along the Cambodian, Laotian and Thai borders.
I suspect it's working even worse for them in Iraq than it did in Vietnam where it really had no effect at all on the war except propaganda value for Americans. It was a desperation attempt to get the Vietnamese locals to cooperate... and they did, until nightfall.
If you want the full brutal picture... read up on Special Forces S.O.G.s (Special Operations Groups). They were/are the torturers and assassins.
They are being used in backwater Afghanistan right now, by Pentagon admission a while back, and I suspect that Ganci Air Base in Kyrgyzstan is the current base of operation for the region.
Leigh