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This site aims to provide a basic outline of important, but too often unknown to the public consciousness,
information relating to US foreign policy around the world over the past few decades - information which
should perhaps be kept in mind when looking at the current direction the US is taking in its foreign policy.
All information is backed up with links to articles / sources from around the web, to allow for quick
verification.
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A few highlights of recent US Foreign Policy ... |
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Comments, suggestions, criticism please direct at
godblesstheusa@bevin.de or enter in the forum.
Any additional backed-up facts regarding the topics contained in this site or related
topics would be greatly appreciated.
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No great updates recently. Currently working on a new dynamic website which will incorporate information
from this site with information from CCR in a system allowing
users to dynamically input and update all the information contained on the site. Not sure about when this
will be complete but watch this space (while also keeping a watch on events in Venezuela which
the Bush Administration also seems to have its eye on) ...
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Added a discussion system, whereby anyone can add personal comments to any of the topics presented
on the site. The comments will be automatically shown on the site directly beneath the corresponding
topics.
Added a new section on Israel. Given the unusually large amount of misinformation
regarding the events in and around Israel, and the complexity of the situation, I thought it
neccessary to devote an entire topic to it. Still very much a work-in-progress however.
Also added a bit on the Israeli Connection to the September 11th
section.
Updated the Libya section with more information relating to the Lockerbie bombing.
Added a new section on the Bush Administration's attempts to link Saddam with
Al Qaeda (most of the information was simply extracted from the more general section
regarding the selling of the war).
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Re-organized the whole website into new sections - the amount of information the site contains
was getting too much for the old 'two-tier' system of navigation, so I've now created a
'three-tier' one. Still working on it, so let me know how you like it.
Added a new section under Iraq on the uranium claim.
Added a new section on Libya.
Added a new section under General Issues on Diego Garcia, in particular the
expulsion of the island's native inhabitants in preparation for the US naval base there.
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Added a new section documenting the changing rhetoric given
by the Bush Administration regarding their promises to install democracy in Iraq. Also
added some new developments regarding the propaganda on Iraq and post-war
Iraq.
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Updated the WTC Bombing section, and added a new analysis
of whether the Iraq war achieved its goals.
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| | | Vice Guide to American Foreign Policy |
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This guide is taken from this article which
was originally published in the Vice magazine. The topic headings
link to the corresponding sections in this website, where the claims presented here are backed up with the facts.
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The 1899 Filipino-American War is one of those nasty little conflicts that you won't find a lot about in your high school history textbook. Call it the first Vietnam. During the 1898 Spanish-American War, the U.S. help the Filipinos gain independence from Spain. Then they declare the country an American colony. A brutal war follows. Many of the scorched-earth tactics used in Vietnam are first used here. More than 100,000 Filipinos die. A large anti-imperialism movement starts in the U.S. 'We do not intend to free, but subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem,' wrote early celebrity activist Mark Twain. In 1945, the Americans come back to the Philippines. Even though they have a common enemy - Japan - America fights leftist forces known as Huks. The U.S. defeat the Huks, and install a series of puppet presidents, culminating in the absurdly corrupt Ferdinand Marcos. He and his high-heel-obsessed wife bilk the poverty-ridden country dry for three decades, until retiring comfortably in Hawaii.
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1953 - The CIA's first big takedown. The democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh had to go. He was talking crazy talk, like nationalizing Iran's oil. A CIA-sponsored coup restores the Shah to absolute power that begins 25 years of repression and torture. Iran's oil is returned to its rightful owners, the Americans and British. This, of course, sets the stage for a radical Islamic revolution in 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini takes over, holds Americans hostage, burns many American flags, and pisses off rednecks across America.
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1953 - Jacobo Arbenz also had to go. The progressive democratically elected president is also talking that crazy talk - you know, land reform, civil liberties, nationalizing the Washington-connected United Fruit Company. The CIA organizes a massive disinformation campaign and coup. Next up: 40 years of bad, bad things you don't even want to think about - American-trained death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions. Victims: 100,000.
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In the 50s, the Eisenhower Doctrine stated the United States 'is prepared to use armed forces to assist' any Middle East country 'requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism.' In other words, no one is allowed to fuck around in the Middle East or its oil fields except the United States. The U.S. tries to overthrow the Syrian government (twice), lands 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspires to overthrow and assassinate Arab nationalist Nasser in Egypt. U.S. supports Israel with billions of dollars of aid, despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon.
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1957 - President Sukarno is another troublemaker. He takes back Indonesian companies from their former colonial master, the Dutch. He takes a trip to Moscow. He refuses to crack down on communists. The CIA launches a disinformation campaign, tries to blackmail him with a fake sex film, plots his assassination, and hooks up with dissident military officers to start a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno, unlike many on the Agency's hit list, somehow survives. 1965 - Sukarno is finally overthrown by General Suharto. The U.S. helps him track down anyone suspected of being communist. The New York Times calls what follows 'one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history.' Up to one million die.
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After watching the French get their asses kicked halfway to Montparnasse, the U.S. gets embroiled in a civil war pitting communist nationalist forces against a corrupt, pro-west government. In 1961, the first young American men start arriving home in body bags. Before it's over, more than one million Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans will die, Jimi Hendrix will play Woodstock, the Beatles will form and break up, and the American psyche will be radically transformed. In 1975, the U.S. finally admits defeat, forever dooming it to need to overcome the 'Vietnam Syndrome' (see Rambo).
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1969 - Nixon and Kissinger begin their secret 'carpet bombings' of Cambodia. They say it is to kill Viet Cong hiding out in the Cambodian jungle. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian civilians die. 1970 - Washington finally helps overthrow troublesome Prince Sihanouk in a coup. The U.S. enlists the genocidal maniac Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to help fight the Viet Cong. Five years later, Pol Pot takes over, declares 'Year Zero,' kills anyone with an education, or even wearing glasses, and sends everyone to the countryside to work in agricultural labor camps. More than two million die in his 'killing fields' (see The Killing Fields).
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1960 - Patrice Lumumba becomes the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But the Belgians don't quite leave. They keep their hands on the vast mineral wealth in the Katanga province, where the Americans also have a piece of the action. Lumumba is defiant, calling for the Congo's economic and political liberation. In other words, he is doomed. In January 1961, he is assassinated with help from the CIA, under orders from Eisenhower himself. His body is chopped up into little pieces and burned in acid. Mobutu Sese Seko takes over, changes the name to Zaire, and begins one of the most corrupt and bloody dictatorships in modern times. Even his CIA handlers are amazed at his cruelty. Thirty years later, despite its rich natural resources, the people of the Congo are still dirt-poor, Mobutu is a multibillionaire, and the country is in chaos. In 1997, Mobutu is overthrown, and retires to the Cote d'Azur. The country slides into a civil war that has killed more than one million.
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1959 - When Fidel Castro rolls into Havana New Years Day he isn't a commie - he is a nationalist and an opportunist. But he did take over Cuba's national industries. And that, as we've learned, is something the U.S. doesn't look kindly on. The Americans begin a comically disastrous campaign to oust Castro. They help launch a full-scale invasion at the Bay of Pigs and are crushed. They launch gunboat attacks, bombings, biological warfare. New evidence has just come out that the CIA even considered committing terrorist acts and then blaming them on Cuba as a pretext to invade again. They try to send Castro exploding cigars. Spray poison on his beard. The U.S. issues sanctions and a trade embargo that, more than anything, ensures Castro remains in power.
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1973 - Salvador Allende was a 'dangerous' man. He was popular, democratically elected, and a leftist. Against the objections of many inside the US State Department, the CIA, pushed by Kissinger, helps the military overthrow the government. Allende is killed. General Pinochet closes off the country to the outside world. Tanks roll in, soldiers round up students, stadiums turn into execution fields, the country is gripped by fear. For two decades, Pinochet rules with a brutal hand, and thousands of students, union organizers and other bad apples are 'disappeared' (see the movie Missing).
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December 1975 - Indonesia invades the small island of East Timor, which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal left. The day before, U.S. President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger were in Indonesia meeting with Indonesian President Suharto. Amnesty International estimates that by 1989, Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The U.S. supplies Indonesia with aid, guns, and training throughout.
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1978 - the leftist Sandinistas overthrow the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship. Reagan becomes obsessed with taking out the Cuba-and-Soviet-friendly government, enlisting an army of mercenaries, drug dealers and ex-Somoza National Guardsmen. The Contras attack schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, and bombing. When Congress cuts off funds, Reagan's 'freedom fighters' are financed by CIA drug-dealing and secret arms sales to Iran in what comes to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair.
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During El Salvador's bloody civil war (1980-92), the U.S. funds, trains, and secretly fights alongside a military that operates less like a traditional army than a loose confederation of homicidal fraternities. By the end of the war, 75,000 Salvadorans are dead.
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During the 80s, Manny Noriega was George Bush's boy. On the CIA payroll, he helped the U.S. run drugs, launder money and ship arms to its operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. But ol' Pineapple Face became a problem. Turned out he was helping Castro, laundering money for Pablo Escobar, and talking smack about U.S. imperialism. Plus he knew way too much about the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Dude had to go. In December 1989, Bush sends in the Green Berets to arrest him for drug dealing. A whole Panama City barrio is leveled. The official body count is 500-something, others say 3,000. Noriega sits in a Florida jail feeling confused.
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In the 80s, Saddam Hussein is America's ally. The U.S. sends him weapons and money as he fights a seemingly endless war against Iran, murders his political opponents, and gasses the Kurds. In 1991, Saddam is pissed off at neighboring Kuwait (a country invented by Britain) for undercutting the price of oil. He invades. The U.S. forms an international coalition to 'liberate' Kuwait. Saddam sends an army of barefoot conscripts. For more than 40 days and nights, 177 million pounds of bombs fall on Iraq - the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world. The U.S. uses cancer-causing depleted uranium weapons; they bury soldiers alive; they bomb retreating troops and civilians. At the war's end, the U.S. turns its back on the Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces (see Three Kings). While Saddam remains in power, U.S. sanctions and continued bombing keep food, medicine, and clean water from everyday Iraqis. According to the UN, over one million Iraqis have died, half of them children.
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Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. pours billions of dollars into overthrowing a pro-Soviet government. The CIA funds, trains, and arms a guerrilla army of Islamic extremists known as the Mujahideen. The Soviets are driven out, in their version of Vietnam. More than a million Afghan are dead, three million disabled, and five million made refugees. The country slides into civil war in which an even more radical group of Pakistan-educated students and uneducated hillbillies known as the Taliban take over. The country becomes a haven for anti-American terrorists groups and women-haters. Lies flourish. While outwardly criticizing the Taliban, behind the scenes the CIA and American oil companies jockey for leverage to build a pipeline across the country.
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1999 - After the Serbs start 'ethnic cleansing' Albanians in the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo, the U.S. and NATO launch 70 days of air strikes against Serbia. Thousands of Serbs are killed. The ethnic Albanian KLA guerrilla army, a drug-dealing group of thugs who were first accused of ethnic cleansing Serbs by The New York Times back in 1982, start an open season on Serbs living in Kosovo. The bombs stop, and Serb demagogue Slobodan Milosevic is driven from power by a popular movement.
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2001 - Colombia's three-decade-old civil war is still going strong, despite, or one might say, as a result of $1.4 billion of U.S. military aid. The country is a chaotic death trap. Marxist rebels hold large portions of the country; American mercenaries and defense department front companies like DynCorp are covertly helping the inept Colombian military; right-wing paramilitaries are massacring civilians; and everyone has their hands in the super-lucrative drug trade. Most people don't know that American forces have been around for while. In the early 90s, a secret group code-named Centra Spike launch a covert operation to take out Pablo Escobar, a major cocaine lord who made the fatal mistake of giving money to the poor and talking shit about American imperialism. The Colombian government and the secret American unit go into business with Escobar's rival the Cali Cartel. Escobar is finally killed. The Cali Cartel's power is solidified and the flow of cocaine into the U.S. only increases.
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Sources/ Suggested reading: |
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"The Trial of Henry Kissinger" - Christopher Hitchens, Verso, 2001. Panama Deception -documentary film. Winner 1992 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Director: Barbara Trent.
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire -Chalmers Johnson, Henry Holt, 2000
Weakness and Deceit: U.S. policy and El Salvador -Raymond Bonner, Times Books, New York, 1984
The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War -Peter Dale Scott, Bobbs Merrill, New York and Indianapolis, 1972.
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America -Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall. University of California Press, 1991.
Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror -Peter Dale Scott, New Directions, New York, 1989.
East Timor: Genocide in Paradise -Matthew Jardine, Common Courage Press, 1999.
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw -Mark Bowden, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.
Between Despair and Hope: Windows on My Middle East Journey 1967-1992 Margarita Skinner, UNICEF Health Coordinator in Baghdad from 1991-1992, The Radcliffe Press, London and New York, 1998.
UNICEF Report August 1999: Iraq surveys show 'humanitarian emergency'.
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I am always looking for people willing to do research to extend the information presented on this
website. The information is all stored in a very simple xml file. This file, and the program which generates
the website from it, are contained in this approx. 140kb downloadable file.
Please contact me if you are interested in helping out.
Also, if you like this website, then please link to it so that its information gets spread.
Especially if you reproduce any of the information presented in this website on the internet, then
please give this site credit by linking to it.
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Heres a few cartoons relating to Bush, Iraq etc I've gathered
from around the web. They are taken largely from the following cartoonists :-
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