RW ONLINE: The Pretexts of Powell's Predecessors\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe Pretexts of Powell's Predecessors\r\n<\/p>
Revolutionary Worker #1187, February 16, 2003<\/i>, posted at rwor.org<\/p>\r\n<\/i>
\"It really comes down to whether or not the country trusts President Bush's \r\njudgment.\"<\/p>\r\n
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Senior official aboard Air Force One, New York Times <\/i>, \r\nJanuary 25<\/p>\r\n
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The White House claims its armies must make war on Iraq to defeat \"threats\" \r\nagainst the people of the United States. But these justifications are only as \r\nbelievable as the government itself.<\/p>\r\n
Over and over, U.S. presidents have been proven to be cold-blooded \r\nliars.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
The Spanish-American War<\/p>\r\n
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The U.S. battleship Maine <\/i>blew up on February 15, 1898 in Havana \r\nharbor-- when Cuba was still one of Spain's colonies.<\/p>\r\n
There was never any evidence that Spanish forces were involved in this \r\nexplosion. It may have been accidentally caused by the Maine <\/i>'s crew. But \r\nthis did not stop the pro-war forces in the U.S. ruling class from publishing \r\nfront-page drawings \"showing\" how the Spanish forces had attached mines to the \r\nbottom of the ship. Shouting \"Remember the Maine!\" the U.S. government rushed \r\ninto a war to snatch an empire from Spain. The U.S. claimed this war was also to \r\n\"liberate\" the people of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from \r\ncolonialism. But the U.S. quickly seized the islands for itself. It betrayed the \r\nhopes of the people and brutally suppressed their resistance.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
World War 1<\/p>\r\n
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The transatlantic passenger ship Lusitania <\/i>was sunk by a German \r\nsubmarine in 1915. Over a thousand people died, including 124 Americans. The \r\nU.S. government claimed that the Lusitania <\/i>was a passenger ship only \r\ncarrying innocent cargo. Charging Germany with senselessly attacking civilians, \r\nthe U.S. soon entered World War 1 on the side of Britain.<\/p>\r\n
In fact, the U.S. government was looking for an excuse to join the war and \r\nwas lying about the Lusitania <\/i>. This ship was, as the Germans charged, \r\npacked with U.S. arms heading for Britain--1,248 cases of artillery shells, 5 \r\nmillion rifle cartridges, and millions of rounds of other ammunition. The U.S. \r\nmilitary coldly used civilians as a human cover while it violated its own claims \r\nof neutrality.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
World War 2<\/p>\r\n
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On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor \r\nin Hawaii. The U.S. government and media immediately denounced this raid as an \r\nunprovoked \"sneak attack on U.S. soil.\" The U.S. quickly entered the war against \r\nJapan and Germany.<\/p>\r\n
In fact the Roosevelt administration had long been looking for an excuse to \r\njoin this war. The White House had already lied about two naval incidents in the \r\nAtlantic involving German submarines and U.S. destroyers.<\/p>\r\n
Hawaii was hardly \"U.S. soil.\" These Polynesian islands had been recently \r\nseized from the indigenous people by U.S. troops. They had been turned into a \r\nmassive military base to project U.S. power into the western Pacific--to better \r\ncontrol the people in China and the Philippines.<\/p>\r\n
The U.S. government had knowingly made war in the Pacific inevitable \r\n<\/i>by cutting off Japanese oil and iron scrap in the months preceding \r\n<\/i>Pearl Harbor. And the U.S. War Department knew (despite their claims of \r\nsurprise) that the Japanese fleet was about to respond with a naval offensive \r\nsomewhere <\/i>in the Pacific. Secretary Henry Stimson wrote in his diary: \r\n\"When the news first came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of \r\nrelief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which \r\nwould unite all our people.\"<\/p>\r\n
The attack provided Roosevelt with the basis for rallying people behind his \r\nlong-established aim of waging war with Japan for control of vast areas of the \r\nPacific and Asia--and projecting and extending American imperial power, in \r\nrivalry with other imperialist states, including enemies such as Germany and \r\nJapan, and allies like England.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
Cuban Missile Crisis<\/p>\r\n
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Much is being said in the U.S. press about how Powell's UN speech is like the \r\nperformance of Ambassador Adlai Stevenson--who \"laid out the evidence\" at the UN \r\nduring the October 1963 Cuban missile crisis. Stevenson showed spy-plane photos \r\nof the Soviet Union moving nuclear missiles onto Cuban soil.<\/p>\r\n
The truth is that Stevenson's presentation distorted the situation by denying \r\nkey facts. For example, the U.S. had recently launched an armed CIA invasion of \r\nCuba--landing at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Stevenson specifically swore to \r\nthe UN that the U.S. was not involved (which was a complete lie). After that \r\nfailed invasion, the Cuban government had good reason to expect new attacks from \r\nthe U.S.<\/p>\r\n
Stevenson also didn't discuss that the U.S. had just <\/i>placed \r\nfirst-strike nuclear Jupiter missiles in bases in Turkey, directly threatening \r\nthe Soviet Union. These Jupiter missiles were ready for launch by April 1962. \r\nSoviet ships started moving weapons to Cuba in July 1962.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
Vietnam War<\/p>\r\n
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On August 4, 1964, the White House and Pentagon charged that torpedo gunboats \r\nfrom the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (called \"North Vietnam\" in the U.S. \r\nmedia) had launched unprovoked attacks on the U.S. fleet in the Gulf of \r\nTonkin.<\/p>\r\n
The New York Times <\/i>wrote on its front page: \"President Johnson has \r\nordered retaliatory action against gunboats and `certain supporting facilities \r\nin North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf \r\nof Tonkin.\"<\/p>\r\n
The U.S. Congress passed the \"Gulf of Tonkin Resolution\" which authorized the \r\nmassive deployment of U.S. troops into southern Vietnam. In April 1965, a U.S. \r\ninvasion force of ground troops landed at Danang. It was the start of ten years \r\nof brutal warfare where over 500,000 U.S. troops landed and millions of \r\nVietnamese and over 50,000 U.S. troops died.<\/p>\r\n
In fact, this \"Gulf of Tonkin incident\" was a complete lie. The U.S.S. \r\nMaddox <\/i>was engaged in extremely provocative actions, secretly coordinated \r\nwith direct armed actions against northern Vietnam on August 2. And the supposed \r\ntorpedo attacks on August 4 simply never happened. One of the Navy pilots flying \r\noverhead on that night later said (when he was a retired admiral): \"I had the \r\nbest seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were just \r\nshooting at phantom targets--there were no PT boats there. There was nothing \r\nthere but black water and American fire power.\"<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
Grenada<\/p>\r\n
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In October 1983, the Reagan White House announced that the tiny Caribbean \r\nisland of Grenada was being taken over by Cuban military forces, and that U.S. \r\nstudents at a local medical school were in great \"danger.\" On October 23, U.S. \r\nforces launched \"Operation Urgent Fury\"--they invaded with 7,000 troops and \r\noccupied Grenada.<\/p>\r\n
In fact, this pretext was a complete lie. Grenada had a popular radical \r\ngovernment and the Reagan administration was determined to carry out a \"regime \r\nchange.\" The Cubans on the island were overwhelmingly construction workers and \r\nengineers helping build a new airport. Reagan later joked that the U.S. had to \r\nretake Grenada because it is the world's biggest producer of nutmeg. \"You can't \r\nmake good eggnog without nutmeg,\" he quipped.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
Gulf War--Non-Existent \"Secret Evidence\"<\/p>\r\n
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When the U.S. cabinet first discussed launching a war in the Persian Gulf, on \r\nAugust 3, 1990, General Colin Powell said that it would be impossible to get \r\nsupport for war over Iraq's takeover of Kuwait. Powell reportedly said: \"I think \r\nwe could go to war if they invaded Saudi Arabia.\"<\/p>\r\n
Soon the U.S. government claimed that Iraq was planning to invade Saudi \r\nArabia. The U.S. said it had \"classified satellite photographs\" from September \r\n1990 that showed 265,000 Iraqi soldiers and 1,500 tanks \"massing\" on the Saudi \r\nborder. This threat of \"renewed aggression\" was used to push for UN support and \r\nconvince the U.S. public that a war was necessary.<\/p>\r\n
Investigative reporter <\/i>Jean Heller used commercial satellite photos to \r\nprove that there was no build-up for invasion. \"The satellite pictures were so \r\nclear that at Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia you could see American planes \r\nsitting wingtip to wingtip,\" Heller says. \"We could see clearly the main road \r\nleading right through Kuwait, south to Saudi Arabia, but it was covered with \r\nsand banks from the wind and it was clear that no army had moved over it.\"<\/p>\r\n
A year later, Powell admitted there had been no massive build-up. By then, \r\nthe U.S. had bombed Iraq and established huge permanent bases in Saudi \r\nArabia.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
Gulf War--False Testimony<\/p>\r\n
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In November 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti woman sat before a U.S. congressional \r\ncommittee and told a heart-rending story of cruelty. She said she was a \r\nvolunteer nurse who personally watched Iraqi soldiers throw premature babies out \r\nof incubators in the Al Adnan hospital in Kuwait city and leave them \"on the \r\ncold floor to die.\"<\/p>\r\n
President Bush Senior mentioned these \"incubator babies\" in five speeches. \r\nSenators mentioned them as they voted for pro-war resolutions.<\/p>\r\n
Myra Ancog-Cooke, the Filipino nurse who slept in the Kuwaiti incubator room \r\nwith the infants, later said: \"I remember someone called and said, `Look at CNN, \r\nthey are talking about us.' We watched and it was strange seeing that girl \r\ntelling them about the Iraqis taking the babies out of the incubators. I said to \r\nFreida, `That's funny, we've never seen her. She never worked here.' \"<\/p>\r\n
The incubator testimony was a total hoax. It was the brainchild of Hill & \r\nKnowlton--a public relations firm hired for $2 million by the Kuwaiti monarchy. \r\nThe woman who testified before the world's TV cameras turned out to be Niyirah \r\nal Sabah, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
Sudan Bombing<\/p>\r\n
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On August 20, 1998, the U.S. sent 13 cruise missiles into the huge al Shifa \r\npharmaceutical factory near Khartoum in the Sudan--completely destroying it.<\/p>\r\n
The Clinton administration justified the attack, saying the factory was a \r\nthreat \"to our national security.\" The U.S. government said the CIA had proof \r\nthat al Shifa was linked to Osama bin Laden and was making nerve gas.<\/p>\r\n
The CIA later admitted that these charges were untrue.<\/p>\r\n
Sudan only had two medicine factories. It lost its source of anti-malarial \r\nand anti-TB drugs, aspirin and veterinary medicine. One worker died.<\/p>\r\n
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*****<\/p>\r\n<\/i>
\"Given its history, U.S. intelligence should come with a health warning.\"<\/p>\r\n
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Guardian <\/i>(UK), February 6, 2003<\/p>\r\n
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This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker \r\nOnline
rwor.org
Write: Box 3486, \r\nMerchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
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