Making the hero pay: A Nation's Betrayal

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Making-the-hero-pay-A-Nat-by-Dave-Lindorff-130608-632.html



Making the hero pay: A Nation's Betrayal
OpEdNews Op Eds 6/8/2013 at 13:53:53
By Dave Lindorff

~snip~

Let's take a moment to consider some of the conduct of our most recent leaders and the outcomes of that conduct. Lyndon Johnson lied about a naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to initiate combat in Vietnam. Nixon lied to the American people about a secret plan to end the war while he was actually using intermediaries to delay peace talks to help his election chances. More than one million Vietnamese and 58,209 Americans perished in that senseless war. America's prestige was exposed as a fraud and we are still exacting a price from homeless veterans, Agent Orange survivors and PTSD victims, not to mention the decades it has taken in restoration efforts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Ronald Reagan lied about selling arms to Iran in exchange for freeing hostages. He also lied about the terrorist assault that America was sponsoring against the democratically elected government of Nicaragua through our proxy army of contras, funded with the profits from the illegal arms sales. Those and other policies in latin America contributed to the extermination of over a million peasant, farmers and indigenous people in the region.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, in the face of contradictory evidence, lied about weapons of mass destruction to get us into war in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell substantiated the lie. The military ignored the lie and got down to the dirty work of committing war crimes and devastating a civilian population. The results: hundreds of thousands dead, a corrupt government is slowly turning back into a dictatorship, sectarian strife is rampant, mercenary American corporations have made billions and America is even hated more fiercely than it was prior to the start of our unprovoked attack. Now muslims worldwide accuse the U.S. of conducting a religious crusade in an attempt to destroy Islam. It's not too hard to understand why they've drawn that conclusion.

Obama lied to us just last week when he assured us that his administration only murders bad guys when they can't be caught first.