Four Bloody Lies of War, from Havana 1898 to Baghdad 2003

[chlamor]

Four bloody lies of war, from Havana 1898 to Baghdad 2003
May 8, 2005

The Bush Administration's lies about its rationales for attacking Iraq fit a pattern of deceit that has dragged America into at least three other unjust and catastrophic wars.

The "smoking gun" documents that emerged in the recent British election confirm the administration had decided to go to war and then sought "intelligence" to sell it.

But conscious, manipulative lies were also at the root of American attacks on Cuba in 1898, US intervention into World War I in 1917 and in Vietnam. These lies are as proven and irrefutable as the unconscionable deception that dragged the US into Iraq in 2003.
In each case, these lies of war have caused horrific human slaughter, the destruction of human rights and liberties, and financial disaster.

In Cuba, the 1898 sinking of the battleship Maine brought the US into war with Spain. The people of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were in revolt against the crumbling Spanish empire. Media baron William Randolph Hearst, the era's Rupert Murdoch, wanted a war to sell papers and promote "jingo" power. He portrayed the Spaniards barbaric rapists and worse. In the name of democracy and freedom, Hearst and pro-war fanatics like Theodore Roosevelt demanded US intervention.


http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2005/1123

[Lucky Luciano]

1. ...and many people look kindly on Teddy R

I like his whole national parks thing, but his foreign policy runs very counter to what a DUer would consider correct!

[Terran1212]

2. What was it Teddy called the war?

A "splendid little war"?

[chlamor]

3. Abu Ghraib is not an Aberration

" ... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret. ": Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

=

Our men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to "make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.": Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines

[indepat]

4. Many more are described in Professor John Quigley's "Ruses for War,"

Prometheus Books (Buffalo, NY- 1992) wherein Professor Quigley describes US military actions taken over the past some fifty years. From the dust jacket "What emerges is a tale of coverups, distortions, and manipulation of the media by our country's leaders for the purpose of gaining public support."