Lies the government told you
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President Roosevelt did not personally kill 2,403 Americans at Pearl Harbor, but the same principle applies. He welcomed an attack he knew would certainly result in thousands of American casualties. In the long term, he undoubtedly preserved lives by entering World War II, but his murderous offense in starting the war is not morally, legally, or constitutionally justified.
“They Fired at Us First.”
For much of the twentieth century, the United States government used the threat of communism and the Cold War to justify armed conflict with numerous Asian nations, and pulled an FDR-like move to enter the Vietnam War in 1964.
Communist movements, supported by the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, were sweeping through Southeast Asia. This led to a clash between the national and communist powers in Vietnam and incited the First Indochina War (1946 to 1954), in which the French, supported by the United States, fought against the communist guerrillas. The communists defeated the French, signifying the rise of a revolutionary communist force.
The Geneva Accords (1954) ended the hostilities and stipulated that Indochina was to be independent from French colonial rule. Furthermore, foreign presence was to cease in the region, and Vietnam was temporarily partitioned into northern and southern zones until nationwide elections could be held in 1956. The United States refused to recognize the Accords, as the agreement would limit its involvement in a region infected with communism.
Late in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower advanced the Domino Theory, teaching that once one nation falls to communism, neighboring nations will also succumb to that horrid form of government, one by one. Based on this severely flawed theory, the United States installed a puppet regime in South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh’s communist government controlled North Vietnam, with support from China and the Soviet Union. In 1961, the United States provided direct military and financial support to South Vietnam under President John F. Kennedy. This also violated the Geneva Accords.
Furthermore, the United States initiated covert CIA operations that escalated and intensified American involvement in Vietnam before the outbreak of war. In 1961, the CIA began reconnaissance missions in the North and naval sabotage operations by sending destroyer boats to the northern coast. This program was later transferred in 1964 to the Defense Department and was under the direct control of the Pentagon. The United States military also used Agent Orange along the Ho Chi Minh trail, along which the Vietcong was transporting troops and weapons.
In addition, President Kennedy authorized the CIA to support a coup against Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam, because Kennedy’s administration feared that Diem would be unable to defeat the Communists. In 1963, a local general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) overthrew and executed Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. The United States, in noble fashion, denied any involvement in the assassination and primarily placed blame on the ARVN.
That brings us to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s best impression of FDR. In 1964, Johnson blatantly provoked a Vietnamese attack, but claimed that the United States was attacked first. On July 31st 1964, two American destroyers, the USS Maddox and The Turner Joy, began an electronic intelligence collection mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. This was a secret mission orchestrated by the Pentagon without any congressional authority. On August 2nd 1964, the Maddox reported that it was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Maddox allegedly returned fire, sinking one of the boats and severely damaging the other.
In 2005, a declassified National Security Agency (NSA) report revealed that the Maddox actually fired first. There is evidence that the destroyers were, in fact, instructed to open fire to scare off any communist boats that came too close. According to the report, Captain John J. Herrick, the task force commander in the Gulf of Tonkin, ordered the destroyers to “open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards . . . The Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first.”
Two days later, on August 4th 1964, the Pentagon claimed that North Vietnamese boats launched a second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. On that date, the U.S. destroyers believed they received radio and radar signals indicating that they were under attack by the North Vietnamese Navy, and opened fire for two hours. A 2005 NSA report revealed, however, that not only was there no North Vietnamese attack on August 4th, but there may not have even been any North Vietnamese boats in the area. Cables from Herrick showed that the signals came from “freak weather effects,” “almost total darkness,” and an “overeager sonarman” who “was hearing [his] ship’s own propeller beat.”
Nevertheless, on the night of August 4th, in the midst of a presidential election campaign against Senator Barry M. Goldwater, President Johnson proclaimed on national television that the United States would begin air strikes against North Vietnam to “retaliate” against the (phantom) torpedo attack. In his speech, Johnson announced that “[t]his new act of aggression, aimed directly at our own forces, again brings home to all of us in the United States the importance of the struggle for peace and security in southeast Asia . . . Yet our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risks of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.”
Seeking to protect the United States against the North Vietnamese, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (H.J. RES 1145), a joint resolution giving Johnson the right to initiate military force in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war.9 Until late in 1964, after Election Day, Johnson held himself out as the peace candidate and called Goldwater “a war monger.”
To say the consequences of starting war with Vietnam were devastating is to be guilty of an egregious understatement. In addition to costing better than $200 million, the Vietnam War resulted in more than 519,000 seriously injured Americans, more than 300,000 wounded Americans, and more than 50,000 dead Americans. Furthermore, roughly 2,500 Americans are still missing in action and presumed dead. Why? Because Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson believed that communism, a form of government and political theory that exalts the state over individuals, could somehow be contained on the battlefield.
When in history have ideas been contained via the use of military force? Never! Not even the most powerful military in the world can “draw a line” stopping the expansion of ideas. President Johnson believed that the Vietnam War would be different, however, and he lied to us to get us involved. Johnson also knew that America’s major wartime presidents—Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR—were its most powerful and revered. He yearned to be among them. Twenty-five years after the Tonkin deception, Communism fell of its own weight, without a shot being fired. And LBJ’s presidency is all but forgotten, except for civil rights and the Medicare and Medicaid bills we are all still paying.
“Grave and Gathering” Deceit
President George W. Bush’s use of deception to trick Congress and the American people into authorizing the Iraq War should go down as one of the deadliest, yet most creative marketing jobs in the history of the world.10 The Bush Administration’s goal, from the beginning of its stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, was to go to war with Iraq. Paul O’Neill, President Bush’s first treasury secretary, who attended the first meeting of Bush’s National Security Council on January 30th 2001, stated, “Ten days in, and it was about Iraq.” According to O’Neill, “From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country. And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was all about finding a way to do it.”
There’s certainly nothing wrong with “building a case”; lawyers do it all the time. When advocating, it is important for attorneys to highlight arguments that help their clients, while trying to downplay arguments that hurt them. Lawyers, under no circumstances, are permitted to lie to get their way. For some reason, however, we do not hold politicia
ns and presidents to this standard. George W. Bush realized this, and capitalized.
Before September 11th 2001, George W. Bush saw Saddam Hussein as a threat to Middle Eastern and American security, yet did not overtly seek war with Iraq. Even after 9/11, on September 16th 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that “Saddam Hussein’s bottled up at this point.” According to Cheney, there was no evidence linking Iraq to the terrorism and 9/11.
The attacks of September 11th 2001, provided President Bush with an advantage, in that there was overwhelming support for any and all counterterrorism plans put forth by the government. At the time, President Bush was revered and recorded astronomical approval ratings. Yet, public support for a war with Iraq was lacking. In November 2001, 74 percent of Americans favored ousting Saddam Hussein. By the end of Summer 2002, however, only a bare majority of Americans still supported regime change in Iraq. What is striking, though, is that more than 80 percent of Americans believed Iraq supported terrorist organizations poised to attack the United States. Better than 90 percent of Americans believed Iraq possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction. A majority of Americans, contrary to Cheney’s statement made a year earlier, believed that Saddam was linked to the 9/11 attacks.
Americans felt this way about Iraq becausethe Bush Administration conducted an intense campaign to “educate” (lie to) the American public about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. In December 2001, Cheney returned to Meet the Press and suggested that Saddam Hussein did, in fact, play a role in 9/11. In early 2002, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was calling for a serious response to regimes that seek to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Cheney declared that Iraq officials had “a robust set of programs to develop their own weapons of mass destruction,” and that “we know [Saddam] has been actively and aggressively doing everything he can to enhance his capabilities.” Cheney also continued to discuss Saddam’s relationship with the terrorists.
In Summer 2002, Bush created the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a committee set up to coordinate marketing the war to the public. In August 2002, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville, Tennessee, Cheney stated that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, against us” (emphasis added). Later, on September 8th 2002, Condoleezza Rice stated the following at the United Nations: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
The message was clear: Saddam had WMDs, he could use them at any moment, and he was friends with the terrorists. To any American, this was frightening. Might Saddam’s WMDs have been the same shipments that the U.S. sold to him in 1986 so as to help him defeat Iran in the Iran-Iraq War? If so, the sales were orchestrated by then-and-future Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
In September 2002, the Bush Administration took its marketing campaign to the next level. On September 12th 2002, at the United Nations, Bush reminded the UN that Saddam brutalized his own people and disregarded UN Security Council resolutions. Bush also threw in a few lies, so as not to veer from the theme of his presidency. He stated that Iraq posed a “grave and gathering danger,” was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and supported terrorism. According to Bush, if the UN did not control Iraq, the United States would dispel the threat militarily.
A little over a week later, on September 20th 2002, Bush called a meeting of the Republican governors at the White House to promote war with Iraq. Bush went through all the usual talking points but also emphasized the importance of promoting liberty, individual freedom, and democracy around the world. According to Bush, “Afghanistan and Iraq will lead [the Middle East] to democracy. They are going to be the catalyst to change the Middle East and the world.” There is nothing wrong with promoting liberty and individual freedom; in fact, it is encouraged. However, the idea that a country, through the use of military force, can coercively install freedom in a region that had never been exposed to democracy is misguided. Yet, it was clear that Bush wanted to be the first president to deliver freedom to the Middle East and fix a broken region.
Bush, however, did not promote his grand ideas directly to the American people. Instead, Bush continued instilling fear in us and warning of the grave threat that Saddam posed to American security. For example, in a speech in Houston, Texas, on September 27th 2002, Bush stated that Saddam was “the guy who tried to kill my dad,” a former American president. Bush knew that scaring us into going to war with Iraq with statements like these would be much more effective than trying to tell us that installing democracy in Iraq would somehow work and also spill over to the rest of the Middle East.
By late October 2002, Bush’s marketing plan was coming to a close. Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing the president to use military force in Iraq. President Bush, however, continued to plug the war by telling more and more lies. This wasn’t a problem for the Bush administration, however, so long as it created more and more fear. In December 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that Iraq sought to import yellowcake uranium from Niger. In his State of the Union Address on January 28th 2003, Bush reiterated Powell’s claim, stating that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein has recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
These claims, however, had been proven false long before the administration sought to pass them off as true. The Niger story was based on forged documents, and an investigation done by the Bush administration in March 2002 indicated that Saddam was not looking to purchase uranium from Africa. Apparently, the administration felt that every little bit of lying would be worth it in the long run.
On March 19th 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and quickly ousted Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration did not plan for the aftermath, or develop a strategy to leave Iraq. Bush claimed that the United States would deal with Iraq in a “logical way,” but his approach to Iraq was anything but logical. We are still in Iraq. More than 4,400 Americans are dead, and there have been over 650,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. More than 2,500,000 Iraqis have fled their country since the U.S. invasion and occupation began.
“Wrong, Terribly Wrong”
The American tragedies discussed in this chapter are not entirely the fault of the American people. We hire government officials expecting them to do the right thing. We want them to do the right thing. We also trust that the government has credible information at hand and takes threats to our freedom very seriously. Yet, this chapter shows that the government constantly lies to us in order to enter and initiate wars. This is a common government practice that we must recognize, and one that must be stopped. It is unacceptable that the government lies to us all the time, about everything. It is dangerous and criminal, however, that the government lies to us in order to send troops into harm’s way.
In The New York Times on July 7th 2009, Bob Herbert wrote an op-ed piece entitled “After the War Was Over,” in the wake of Robert McNamara’s death “at the ripe old age of 93.” McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and he assured Johnson that we had solid evidence of a North Vietnamese attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. He was wrong, and long after the war he admitted that he had been “wrong, terribly wrong” about Vietnam.
We were misled to enter the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II, the Vietnam War, and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We were “wrong, terribly wrong” about Vietnam and Iraq. Herbert pointed out that apologies after wars are over do not bring soldiers and civilians back to life, and stated his “utter contempt” for such apologies. Implicit in Herbert’s view was the necessity to put an end to the lying and to stop nonsensical and irrational wars before it is too late. In terms of war, deception and misinformation kill.
Lie #15
On June 26th 2003, President George W. Bush asserted, “The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example.” No surprise here; President Bush lied. The United States of America is not committed to the worldwide elimination of torture; rather, under Bush, it supported, facilitated, and directly engaged in torture. The United States has tortured people, and will continue to torture as long as Americans overlook and excuse the crimes committed by our government, and as long as Americans accept government deception on torture.
President George W. Bush’s administration used fear mongering to justify its torture policy and restrictions on the due process rights of persons it arrested. Under the cloak of “saving lives” and “dispelling grave threats,” our officials have repeatedly condoned policies that violate international conventions (treaties) regarding the treatment of prisoners, as well as the United States Constitution and federal and state statutory law.
This chapter discusses the Bush administration’s torture policy, but also explains how the federal government, during times of war, severely restricts the rights of all persons except those in the government.
Detention, Habeas Corpus, and the Supreme Court
The Latin phrase habeas corpus literally means “you have the body.” It is a legal action, usually called a “writ,” which means a “right,” through which an individual seeks relief from unlawful detention. The habeas corpus protection is directly guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2, provides that “[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The protection is also codified in the United States Code, under 28 U.S.C. §2242(a), which states the following: “Writs of habeas corpus may be granted by the Supreme Court, any justice thereof, the district courts and any circuit judge within their respective jurisdictions.” Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that the right to habeas corpus is derived from common law. According to Justice John Paul Stevens, “‘ . . . habeas corpus is . . . a writ antecedent to statute, throwing its root deep into the genius of our common law.’”2 Indeed, the right to habeas corpus has been guaranteed to all persons in Western law since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.