Remembering Lies That Led to Wars

 Sec. of Defense Robert S. McNamara lying through his teeth in 1964.

With the drumbeat for war sounding as you read this post, it's worthwhile to remember that sometimes a president’s advisers have lied to him with devastating consequences.

For instance, I don’t believe Johnson thought up the bogus information that led to the Gulf on Tonkin Resolution in August of 1964, which led to a massive escalation of the Vietnam War. Somebody else made it up ... then Johnson decided to believe it, or pretend to believe it.

The same goes with Bush; with regard to Iraq, he didn’t make up the weapons of mass destruction "evidence" that proved later to have been based on lies. No, he lacked the imagination to have dreamed all that stuff up. For whatever reasons, somebody else fabricated the lies Bush heard and then-Sec. of State Colin Powell repeated to the United Nations in February of 2003.

Now I wonder who is lying to Obama about what’s happened in Syria … and who is telling him the truth. Moreover, although I am an unqualified Obama supporter, I wonder if he -- as other presidents before him were -- is being tempted to believe convenient lies.

Of course I don’t know what has happened in Syria, to do with chemical weapons attacks. Some people are acting like they do, but I’m old and I’ve seen that sort of thing before. And, as long as big shots in the USA think Uncle Sam should go on being the world’s policeman, there will always be provocations -- both real and imagined.