moon

The current flood of lies coming out of the White House in its desperate attempt to provide a pretext for an attack on Iraq is nothing new. In fact, deception by the U.S. government has been the norm when it comes to war and starting wars. It is not hard to understand why the government always has to resort to massive lying in order to get the country to go to war. People don't want war. They have to be driven to it by fear, jingoism or greed. Since no war that the U.S. has been involved with since at least the Civil War would have been supported by the populace, the government has been forced to resort to massive deception in order to manufacture consent for imperialist wars. Here is a partial list of deception by the U.S. government to start war. Feel free to add to this list.

• Gulf War II
  (1) Saddam kicked inspectors out of Iraq in 1998. This has been repeated ad nauseum by every warmonger in town. In fact, the U.S. ordered Richard Butler, the head of UNSCOM, to withdraw inspectors prepatory to the U.S. bombing of Iraq in Operation Desert Fox.
  
  (2) Bush, in September of last year announced that IAEA had released a report stating that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. This was refuted by the IAEA.
  
  (3) The administration has often claimed that there is a link between Saddam and al Qaeda, when in fact the two are bitter enemies.
  
  (4) Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague before the 911 attacks. This was refuted even by the client regime in the Czech Republic, yet continues to live on.
  
• Gulf War I:
  (1) Stories of 500 babies being torn from incubators by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait, in order to steal the incubators. This tale was told by a tearful daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador on the floor of the U.S. congress. It was later picked up by all the main media, repeated by George Bush and numerous senators in their justifications for war. It turned out to have been a total fabrication by the firm of Hill and Knowlton, a P.R. firm in the employ of Kuwaitis.
  
  (2) Satellite photos of Iraqi soldiers amassing at the border of Saudi Arabia. The State Department claimed to have satellite photos of tens of thousands of Iraqi troops amassing at the Saudi border readying for an invasion. This was the justification for employing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in Operation Desert Shield. The photos were never released. A U.S. newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times obtained satellite photos of the border showing no such troop movements.
  
• Libya
  The bombing of Libya in April, 1986 was justified, according to Reagan, as "self-defense," in retaliation for the bombing of a German dischoteque in which an American soldier was killed. No evidence for Libyan complicity in the bombing was ever presented, and German intelligence explicitely denied the link. The target, Qaddafi, was not killed, but dozens were, including his 18 month old daughter.
  
• Vietnam
  The number of lies told by the U.S. during the Vietnam War fill several volumes, but the biggest lie was regarding the Gulf of Tonkin "incident," used by Johnson to push through the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, granting wide powers to Johnson to wage war. Essentially, the U.S. just made up a story about the Vietnamese firing on a U.S. warship in the Gulf of Tonkin.
  
  Also of note is that a young major by the name of Colin Powell was put in charge of covering up the My Lai massacre, where U.S. soldiers went into the hamlet of My Lai 4, ordered the villagers into a ditch and then cut them to pieces with machine gun fire, killing 347 unarmed civilians. After allegations made by a young soldier named Tom Glen, Powell performed a cursory investigation (cover-up) and issued a report (pack of lies) in which he stated, "In direct refutation of this (Glen's) portrayal, is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
  
• World War II
  Roosevelt probably lied about the Pearl Harbour attack, but there is some controversy about that. What is known, however, is that Truman lied about the necessity of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which left some 140,000 civilians dead.
  
• Spanish-American War
  This ludicrously titled war was justified by the alleged blowing up of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor in 1898. The pretext was needed in order to justify the U.S. taking over Cuba and the Philippines.
  
• Mexican-American War
  In 1848 President James Polk initiated provocations along the border with Mexico in order to justify entering a war with Mexico under the pretext of "self-defense," to steal Texas, Arizona and California.

echidna

You couldn't find anything on the War of Independence ?

elwoodblues

Yeah, the US was at fault in the Civil War, as well.

moon

In fact, the Civil War was the last progressive war the U.S. has been a major contributor to. I applaud Lincoln and the North for defeating the racist South in their fight against slavery.

While WWII counts as a progressive war in the fight against fascism, the fight against the Nazis was overwhelmingly fought by the Soviets. The U.S. role was basically as a sideshow to the real fighting on the eastern front. After the war, while the Soviets performed a de-nazification process in East Germany, the U.S. re-organized the Nazi intelligence apparatus to fight against communists in East Europe and Latin America. The war in the Pacific was a straight imperialist war.

echidna

Silly me. Of course, yet another unjustified act of aggression. Well that's enough for me. I'll look forward to watching the UN using the Spanish-American and Mexican-American Wars to decide actions in Iraq. Moon, when you find Kofi Annan's speech on this, could you be so good as to post a link ? For some queer reason I'm having trouble finding the transcript.

Grad Student Humanist

Well, Moon, you definitely should know what lies and propaganda look like since you're the biggest propagandist on this site, reaching new lows the other day on the "Why Communism Always Fails" thread.

moon

Do you have anything to add to this discussion, or did you just pop in to throw around some ad hominems?

I can only shake my head at the sorry state of American education if you really are a grad student.

Me and Me

All imperialist countries in order to drum up support for foreign aggression has to lie to it's citizens and or keep it's citizens in the dark as to what the troops are doing in their own name.

The Bourgeois are the best at that.

echidna

Lucky for you you don't live in one of those countries isn't it ?

Me and Me

Is Echidna being a good little yes man and trying to convince us that the U.S. doesn't lie to start wars?