The 1960 presidential election was fought primarily on the issue of communism. Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States VI: JFK: To the Brink
His [JFK] administration was nicknamed Camelot. ibid.
Operation Mongoose: A terror campaign overseen by his brother Robert. ibid.
US personnel in Vietnam jumped from 800 when Kennedy took office to over 16,000 advisors in 1963. ibid.
Under Kennedy’s three-year watch the CIA launched 163 major covert operations worldwide. ibid.
Brazil: the new regime tortured 50,000 people. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VII: Johnson, Nixon and Vietnam: Reversal of Fortune
Georgios Papadopoulos Prime Minister of Greece 1967-1973: captain in a Nazi security battalion ... the first CIA agent to become the premier of a European country. ibid.
Covert militaries against North Vietnam ... and bombing border villages. ibid.
It would take years for the American people to discover the false origins of the Vietnam War. In August of 1964 Johnson and McNamara used a fabricated incident in North Vietnam’s Bay of Tonkin. ibid.
Following the election Johnson began a steady process of escalation ... Napalm, cluster bombs and white phosphorus which burns from the skin straight through to the bone. ibid.
America’s campuses began to buzz with activism. ibid.
Hoover pursued Martin Luther King with a vengeance ... Race riots once more erupted across America. ibid.
What Richard Nixon actually delivered to the country was not peace, law or order, but war, chaos and disorder. ibid.
Sounding more like a gangster than a statesman Kissinger conveyed the order to bomb. ibid.
Chile had survived as a model democracy since 1932; they would not survive Nixon and Kissinger. ibid.
No appreciation of the suffering of the Vietnamese. ibid.
The American war against the poor of the Earth ... the collateral damage. ibid.
In 1970 Attorney General John Mitchell: ‘This country is going so far right that you are not going to recognise it’. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VIII: Reagan, Gorbachev & Third World: Rise of the Right
The dark chasms of American life where racism [Birth of a Nation 1915], militarism, imperialism and blind devotion to private enterprise festered. ibid.
The amiable Gerard Ford, a man who Lyndon Johnson said could not fart and chew gum at the same time. ibid.
A network of conservative think-tanks as well as rich foundations invested large sums of money to push for their agendas. ibid.
Carter never fulfilled his promise to reduce defence spending. ibid.
Reagan: The facts never quite mattered if there was a good punchline. ibid.
Reagan left behind a bloody trail of death and destruction. ibid.
The 15,000 Contra army employing kidnapping, torture, rape and murder targeted health clinics, schools, agricultural co-operatives, bridges and power stations. ibid.
He [Reagan] went so far as to call the Contras ‘the moral equivalents of our founding fathers’. ibid.
He [Reagan] spent enormous sums on the military while cutting social programs to the poor. He reduced taxes on the wealthy. ibid.
Wall Street went on an enormous ‘greed is good’ looting binge. ibid.
They would feed the insatiable appetite of the military industrial complex. ibid.
2But Ronald Reagan at the least let the chance to rid the world of nuclear weapons slip through his fingers because he wouldn’t let go of a space fantasy. ibid.
For a glorious moment in the late 1980s the world was a hopeful, joyous place. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States IX: Bush and Clinton – American Triumphalism – New World Order
Reagan hadn’t wanted him [Bush senior] on the ticket ... Bush appealed to voter’s racism and fear of crime. ibid.
Had aided and abetted the Third Reich... President Bush’s own father, Prescott Bush. ibid.
Henry Ford’s German subsidiary manufactured an arsenal of military vehicles through the war. ibid.
Bank for International Settlements Basel Switzerland: J P Morgan Bank, Chase Bank, Union Bank and BIS were the four dominant banks who succeeded in obfuscating their collaboration with the Nazis. ibid.
Charles Lindberg one of the most celebrated Americans of the 1920 became a poster boy for the Isolationist America First movement. ibid.
In December 1989 Bush and his administration launched its invasion of Panama [Operation Just Cause] ... On the CIA payroll since the 1960s – [Manuel] Noriega – assisting the Medellin drug cartel. ibid.
The Reagan administration had cozeed up during the Iran war to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, turning a blind eye to his repeated use of chemical weapons, sometimes against his own people. Made in part from US-supplied chemicals. ibid.
‘They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the children to die on the cold floor’ ... It was a masterful performance ... The young witness [Nayirah] had never been at the hospital ... The US bombing of Baghdad had begun. ibid.
A new era in American geopolitics. It would take the country deeper into a rabbit hole it had never been before ... Bush: he called it a New World Order. ibid.
The United States had been blaming social and political upheaval on the Soviet Union for the previous forty-six years ... The bloated military budget vs. peace dividend. ibid.
Both parties lurched further to the right. ibid.
US prison population exploded ... many of them meaningless drugs crime. ibid.
Gorbachev: his goals – to dismember and liquidate the USSR – matched the goals of the American leadership. ibid.
The 2000 election itself: the most scandalous in US history ... An ominous oracle. ibid.
US Supreme Court 5-4 to stop a recount thus handing Bush the election ... If it had happened in another country it would have been denounced as a coup by the United States. ibid.
Bush’s incompetent governance ... Where was this New World Order? ibid.
Anger was unleashed on the world – an enormous Pandora’s box of dark energy and pent up fear and chaos. ibid.
‘The tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on empathy we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.’ ibid. Chris Hedges
9/11: a chance to implement the agenda that their Neo-Conservative allies had been working on for decades. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States X: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror
The United States was embarking on a global war. ibid.
The Bush administration branded detainees as ‘unlawful enemy combatants’. ibid.
Afghanistan was a distraction to Bush; his attention was focused on toppling his father’s old adversary Saddam Hussein. ibid.
The US would act unilaterally and pre-emptively to overthrow any government deemed a threat to US security. ibid.
Millions of protesters hit the streets around the world. ibid.
The New York Times Sunday magazine cover for January 5 2003: The American Empire (Get Used to It). ibid.
The eight-year war became the debacle critics predicted. ibid.
Obama brought back the same economic team. ibid.
Bankers: A $700 billion bail-out on remarkable easy terms. ibid.
He [Obama] repeatedly invoked the state’s secrets privilege in lawsuits involving torture, extraordinary rendition and illegal NSA eavesdropping. ibid.
Obama surrounded himself with hawkish advisors. ibid.
Those who accepted torture would tolerate vigilante justice. ibid.
Drones: Obama’s weapon of choice: he personally began selecting those on the kill-list. ibid.
In 2011 the US sold an astonishing 78% of the world’s arms. ibid.
Alfred McCoy: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. ibid.
Have we acted wisely and humanely? … Have we been a force for good? ibid.
Can we not surrender our exceptionalism and arrogance? ibid.