y'all ain't believe this but 162 years ago they started a war based on lies

[underpants]

Today's Highlights in History
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html
1846
The United States declared that a state of war existed against Mexico.


http://hnn.us/articles/24911.html

The Lessons of Mr. Polk's War
By Jeffrey Mankoff
Mr. Mankoff is a writer for the History News Service and a doctoral student in history and security studies at Yale.

An American president, using politicized intelligence, launches a war on specious pretexts. American forces occupy the enemy capital but cannot impose a political settlement or extricate themselves from an increasingly expensive and unpopular war. Meanwhile, on the home front, partisan and sectional rancor increase.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Only one war of many

And in that war, the United States conquered nearly a third of Mexico, with this territory becoming Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and part of Nevada and Colorado. And keep in mind that the war was started and supported by the Democratic Party; the Whigs opposed it.

Mexican American War on the Wikipedia.

[hootinholler]

2. On the bright side, we got Texas out of it.

:sarcasm:

-Hoot

[bryant69]

3. Yeah but we also got California

and from Texas we got Tex-Mex food so it wasn't all bad getting Texas.

I'm being flippant but when I was first studying this in high school I guess, and our cynical teacher with three years to retirement was describing how we screwed Mexico out of all this territory, I was bugged by the fact that land I was standing on and had grown up on really should have been Mexico. But if it were Mexico I wouldn't be there, and I kind of liked it there. The injustices of history had conspired to give me the life I was living. Which is true in a lot of other ways as well.

Bryant
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