USA Quotes

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Similar atrocities occurred in neighboring El Salvador, where US trained troops stabbed de-capitated, raped and machine gunned 767 civilians in the village of El Mozote in late 1981, including 358 children under age 13. Congress ended up funneling almost $6 billion to this tiny country making it the largest recipient of US foreign aid per capita in the world. Wealthy landlords were running the right-wing death squads that murdered thousands of suspected leftists. The death toll from the war reached 70,000.

It was the American war against the poor of the earth, the most easily killed, the collateral damage. As was asked at the beginning, was it really about fighting communism or was it a misunderstood or disguised motivation? It was George Kennen, America's leading early cold war strategist, who went to the heart of the matter in a memorandum written in 1948: 'with 50% percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality, and daydreamings. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards and democratization. We are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.'

A civil war that polarized the country to this day, with much denied, little remembered, nothing regretted and, perhaps, nothing learned.

Freelance journalist S. Hersh in nov. 1969 broke the news that a year and a half earlier US forces had massacred up to 500 civilians in the village of My Lai nicknamed Pinkville for its strong enemy sympathies. Babies, pregnant women and old people had been scalped and mutilated as command of the situation broke down. Not a single shot had been clearly fired at US forces. Indicative of the growing dehumanization of this time, and resembling US attitudes towards the Japanese in WW2 65% of Americans told pollsters they were not bothered by the news of massacre. The only officer found guilty was given a partial pardon by Nixon public opinion strongly in favor.

The US also began bombing the dams near Pyongyang, North Korea, causing enormous floods and destroying the rice crop. The Nuremberg Tribunal had condemned similar actions by Nazis in Holland in 1944 as a war crime.

All powerful military failing to defeat ill equipped Chinese peasants.

When truman finally met with robert oppenheimer in October 1945, he asked him to guess when the russians would develop their own atomic bomb. Oppenheimer did not know. Truman responded that he knew the answer: "never." Clearly surprised by the president's truculent ignorance and frustrated that he did not understand the seriousness of the evolving crisis, Oppenheimer blurted out, "mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands." Truman responded with anger. Truman: I told him the blood was on my hands and to let me worry about that. Afterwards, Truman told dean acheson... Truman: I don't want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again. Oppenheimer was later attacked by right-wing conservatives as an agent of the Soviet Union, and subjected to numerous investigations by the f. B. I. in 1954, his security clearance was revoked. His real crime in the eyes of american authorities was opposing building the new hydrogen bomb, which he considered a weapon of genocide.