If you find this article informative and worthwhile, please support my work by donating if you can.

logo    Lying in America


That you find it improbable and risky that Bush could have merely lied about Iraq's WMD reveals a grossly naive misunderstanding of American culture.

Go to any American home any evening of any week, watch television, and count the number of false, unjustifiable, or misleading statements you hear broadcast. (Take a mechanical counter!) Compare the campaign promises made by any politician with his actions after being elected. Performing these acts will reveal just how pervasive lying is in the American culture. Lying may very well be the defining characteristic of American society.

Even more importantly, you disregard the United States of America's long history of going to war on trumped up pretexts. The two most egregious examples of which are the Spanish American War, which was justified by the erroneous assumption that the Spanish blew up the Maine, and the attack on North Vietnam, which was justified by the infamously fictitious Tonkin Bay Incident.

But there have been numerous others. No one has even bothered to count the number of so called Indian Wars fought on some pretext in order to move native Americans off lands the American government ceded to them in treaties. What about the numerous incursions into Latin America? And Grenada! Remember Grenada? Oh, that was a noble war.

Had you taken any of this into consideration, I doubt that you would have found the B-B Brothers claims about Iraq's WMD nearly as persuasive as you did. (The Economist 7/10/2006)