“Phoenix went far beyond aspirations of ‘winning’ in Vietnam. The program utilized a ‘by any means necessary’ strategy to warfare that included the use of random assassination and the FABRICATION of enemy atrocities in order to rally the civilian population around U.S. forces. PRU operators routinely targeted the backwater villages of Vietnam, killing at least 20,000 civilians as later admitted by CIA Director William Colby. The slaughter of villages was frequently blamed on the Vietcong, while PRU’s ran rampant in the jungles, physically mutilating victims in order to draw greater emotional reactions from Southern citizens as well as oblivious Americans back home.”
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1677-has-the-cias-phoenix-program-been-resurrected-in-syria