The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions.

The program was in operation between 1965 and 1972, and similar efforts existed both before and after that period. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had "neutralized" 81,740 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters, of whom between 26,000 and 41,000 were killed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program (Emphasis Added)

Well I’m gonna take my random drive to Florissant. Need to understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks Niggers and start calling them People. Like dad always said you cant fear or hate an entire race cause of what one man did 40 yrs ago.

Mr. McCulloch's America Can't Stand

~snip~

It's a dire evil to have any cultural, political, or institutional tolerance for lynching by badge. But you don't get to the point where you have a national crisis from that without some pretty highly placed enablers and gatekeepers in elite places. Malignant tumors benefit from a well-suppressed immune system, and a nation that has a nagging sickness in its body is no different. I find it a breathtaking compounding of injustice to have a man like Bob McCulloch at the wheel at the exact time that you fundamentally needed his opposite. At a point when our nation needed to cement the vitally important message to everyone in the land that, yes, you can have full faith in the rule of law. What this nation needed was clear. Here. Look. Justice is possible. The system works. But that is not the message that was sent out in this dark time.

On some deep and fundamental level a disaster like MucCulloch will always fail to grasp how institutionally and systemically malignant his pathetic performance has been for our nation. People are going to die because of this man. People are going to be hurt as a direct result of his willful and ignorant negligence and neglect. Because he had priorities other than justice. Worst of all? He's not alone. America's interests are truly threatened by "public servants" who serve a thin and very narrow slice of the public's good, and who do so in so smugly and so overtly a fashion. This was a dark day in this nation's history, mistaken by a fool for a triumph. His rambling, self-congratulatory babbling brings my blood to a boil whenever I think of it. He tried harder to put Twitter on trial than a murderer who gunned down an unarmed man.

No enemy of this nation has the ability to lay America low this way. From the inside. Hacking and chopping away at the foundation like it's repairing a crumbling road or bridge to do structural damage to it. Here. This. This is what you get. This is how things are versus how you might imagine or with things could or should be. Stop complaining. This is the deal. Suck it up. It is very possible that, someday, a cop is going to be shot and bleeding, and somebody who could help him, who once might have helped him, is just going to mind his or her own business and walk away. "Live by the sword, die by the sword". Like the cop and the drug dealer are just mirror sides of the same coin. That's what a performance like McCulloch's gets you as a nation over time. A nation where people who have to buy in, don't bother. They don't believe.

This is a force multiplier for really bad outcomes. This compounding of evil just cannot stand. Recently, an impatient driver plowed into a large crowd of protesters in Minnesota. Nothing came of it. Now, if you are a person who is already out in the streets over the free-pass murder of Michael Brown, do you have any good will towards the authorities to give out any benefit of the doubt here? Or. Does this compound what is already in your heart and mind and take you to an even darker place? Everything in context. Everything in the context of the moment. Certain people can kill a person of color whenever they claimed to feel threatened. Now? Some can even mow down a crowd of protesters for the sin of being inconvenienced. Everything just feeding negative energy into the great puke funnel that is drowning a dream.

~snip~

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/27/1347424/-Mr-McCulloch-s-America-Can-t-Stand