Caution: This blog promises to be none too popular in the hereabouts. (But what's one more, eh?) Knowledge is good. Repeat. Knowledge is good. (and I think I have the fonts right now....)
“WHY, OF COURSE, the people don’t want to go to war. But, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Hermann Goering, Nazi air marshal
If the Bush administration distorted intelligence or even fabricated evidence in an effort to build public support for the Iraq war, it would be more the rule than the exception to the way wars have been launched since 1898.
I suppose a few examples are in order:
1) The Spanish American war - a politically motivated move to secure fueling stations in the Caribbean and Pacific oceans - was begun (in 1898) when President William McKinley(R) blamed Spain for sinking one of our boats. Americans were aghast. We were, after all, being attacked. Voices cried out all across the nation, "remember the twin towers Maine!". A bloody war ensued from which America emerged victorious after having killed 460 Americans. Grave doubts would eventually emerge that what had prompted the war just never really happened like that. In short, the president flat made the whole thing up. McKinley was re-elected two years later in 1900.
2) Who can forget Lyndon Johnson? In 1964 he asked congress to go to war to protect the world from communists. This one began with another boat that was supposedly an unprovoked attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. What the American public as well as the congress never knew until after the war that we all know as Viet Nam was that the Whitehouse had secretly sent the CIA on missions to infiltrate North Vietnam These "missions" just so happened to pass through the Gulf of Tonkin.
Last night I announced to the American people that the North Vietnamese regime had conducted further deliberate attacks against U.S. naval vessels operating in international waters....
This treaty[the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty] with its accompanying protocol obligates the United States and other members to act in accordance with their constitutional processes to meet terrorist Communist aggression against any of the parties or protocol states.
A bloody war ensued taking the lives of over 50,000 American troops. The outcome was, well, there wasn't any outcome. We lost.
In McNamara’s (read Rumsfeld - but a different kind) own words: “Was the Johnson administration justified in basing its subsequent military actions in Vietnam — including an enormous expansion of force levels—on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution? Answer: Absolutely not.”
President Johnson, having taken over for Kennedy was re-elected in 1964 before all this took place and therefore left office in 1968.
3) Shortly after Kuwait was invaded in 1990, pappy Bush need a little something to drum up his call to war among common American folks. His solution? Point out the atrocities being committed by the Iraqi raiders. Summon an "atrocity witness". In this case it was one shadowy woman identified only as “Nayirah" who, on cue, spouted tales of the evil Iraqi soldiers (remember when Iraqis were the bad guys?) pulling infants from their incubators and leaving them to die. Americans were outraged at the baby-killers.
A bloody war ensued in which 293 Americans would be killed. America did liberate Kuwait victoriously though. The problem was Nayira turned out to be the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S. and hadn't, in fact, witnessed anything.
Despite unprecedented popularity from this military and diplomatic triumph, Bush was unable to withstand discontent at home from a faltering economy, rising violence in inner cities, and continued high deficit spending.
George lost the re-election to some democratic upstart named Clinton in 1992.
4) Even Clinton had a run-in with that bad intelligence thingy while in Kosovo. One of his aids, Jamie Rubin, a state department spokesman passed on false intelligence supposedly gleaned from Kosovo rebels stating that Serb rebels had herded thousands of people into a Pristina football stadium intent on slaughtering them. A subsequent image of the stadium showed it be empty.
During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term. He could point to the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country's history, dropping crime rates in many places, and reduced welfare roles. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus. As part of a plan to celebrate the millennium in 2000, Clinton called for a great national initiative to end racial discrimination.
Clinton subsequently didn't have sex with an intern and was promptly impeached. (Dec 19, 1998)
I just know there's a lesson here somewhere.
Note: I consider this piece to be a value-added synopsis. Some phrases and wording may have been subconsciously, um, borrowed from the original author Michael Moran. His original story can be found here.
4:23:26 PM 
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