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In reply to the discussion: Saudi Arabia fatally bombs ANOTHER Yemeni hospital + 18 Billion in US weapons + Bowie [View all]EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)17. It's not a new role for us
It dates back, depending on your criteria, for at least decades - many would say centuries...
And that was in the 1980s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stockwell
The CIA targeted him and bankrupted him... after he wrote a book exposing a lot of really nasty stuff the CIA did in South America, which led to - as he says - millions of civilian deaths.
If you're sceptical about his claims about the Korean War and drugs, don't be:
"In 1949, two of Chiang Kai-shek's defeated generals, Li Wen Huan and Tuan Shi Wen, marched their Third and Fifth Route armies, with families and livestock, across the mountains to northern Burma. Once installed, the peasant soldiers began cultivating the crop they knew best, the opium poppy.
When China entered the Korean War, the CIA had a desperate need for intelligence on that nation. The agency turned to the warlord generals, who agreed to slip some soldiers back into China. In return, the agency offered arms. Officially, the arms were intended to equip the warlords for a return to China. In fact, the Chinese wanted them to repel any attack by the Burmese.
Soon intelligence began to flow to Washington from the area, which became known as the Golden Triangle. So, too, did heroin, en route to Southeast Asia and often to the United States.
If the agency never condoned the traffic, it never tried to stop it, either. The CIA did, however, lobby the Eisenhower administration to prevent the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the DEA's predecessor, from establishing monitoring posts in the area to study the traffic. Today, the Golden Triangle accounts for about half the heroin in circulation in the world."
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/03/opinion/03iht-edlarry.html
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Saudi Arabia fatally bombs ANOTHER Yemeni hospital + 18 Billion in US weapons + Bowie [View all]
EdwardBernays
Jan 2016
OP
I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times-- FUCK Saudi Arabia, and fuck the evil assholes
Fast Walker 52
Jan 2016
#14