Clandestinely it probably began with the CIA's coup of the legitimately elected government in Iran in 1953, the subsequent assassination of Diem in South Viet Nam in 1963, the coup that overthrew legitimately elected Salvador Allende in 1973 and brought the brutal General Pinochet to power in Chile. Then throughout the cold war there was the propping up of dictatorships in Central America, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Panama as well as the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Then there's Mubarak in Egypt, the Shah in Iran, Saddam Hussein the 1980's in his war with Iran, Pakistan's Zia ul Haq in the late 70's and 80's-on and on it goes.
And if there were any indigenous rebellions say in the Dominican Republic in 1965 we'd just send in the Marines under the pretext of not permitting a Communist regime to come to power in our "neighborhood".
But as the saying goes, the "cats out of the bag"; and it's been that way since the Viet Nam debacle was seen by many as a wrongful war by 1967 and confirmed with Daniel Ellsberg's release of the "Pentagon Papers" in 1971 that showed the war was an unnecessary misadventure built on lies.
Nixon and "Watergate" exposed the president as a congenital liar who would resort to anything to cover up his mendacity.
And it was during this time-or so it seemed- with the various Senate hearings particularly the Church committee hearings investigating the intelligence agencies and Sam Irvin's committee investigating "Watergate", the establishment of the FISA Court to control the excesses of the Executive branch's surveillance activities, there would be effective oversight and enforcement of the government.
Well any notions of real oversight and enforcement of government excesses and wrongdoing came to a screeching halt after 9/11.
Now it was terrorism replacing the demise of Soviet Communism as the new "enemy"- again that indispensible necessity that justifies the American empire and its actions since it attained super power status after W.W.II.
This brief little stroll into some various bits of American history and what America has become over the past 69 years began with the words trust, honor, respect, integrity, being truthful as well as searching for the truth are unfortunately not in any way synonymous with the government in the country of my birth.
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