As a prelude to war in 2003, the administration of George W. Bush did its utmost to convince the public that saddam Hussein’s secret development of weapons of mass destruction posed a threat American security. Within a year of the US invasion of Iraq, it became clear that no such weapons existed. Sadly, this was not the first time the American public was urged to support a war for reasons that turned out later to be scarcely credible. As law professor, John Quigley amply demonstrates in this damming indictment of US Military interventionism since world War II, the Bush administration’s action fit a decades-old pattern of going to war on a pretense rather than informing the public of the government’s true intentions. This newly updated and revised paperback edition of The Ruses for war analyzes each instance of US military intervention abroad since World War II from the perspective of what the public was told or not told about it’s government’s reasons for war. Quigley concludes that the administration’s reasons rarely matched the reality on the ground. Why were American troops committed to Korea in 1950? Was it to stop the onslaught of world communism, as president Truman claimed? Why did the US Marines land in the Dominican Republic in 1966? President Johnson argued that it was to protect Americans in danger. This is the same defense used by president Reagan when he sent troops to Grenada in 1983. But was this the real reason? Quigley also turns his keen critical eye to the stated versus the actual reasons for intervention in the first Gulf War, Somalia, Kosovo, and the current occupation of Iraq. What emerges from his thorough research is a tale of cover-ups, distortions, and manipulation of the media by our country’s leaders for the purpose of gaining public support.
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