A selection of documents and relevant data by Grant Wakefield, UK www.wakefieldcam.freeserve.co.uk

1. We Americans, comprising some 4% of the world's population, consume approximately 40% of its resources. We appear to assume that the resources found in other parts of the world are somehow our birthright. Imagine how this is experienced in third world countries, many of whom have been the recipient of United States military attacks.
2. We maintain this consumption, in large part, because we have the most powerful military in the world, and since WW II we have not hesitated to use it for political and/or economic gain in places like:

China (1945-46)
Korea (1950-53)
China (1950-53)
Guatemala (1954)
Indonesia (1958)
Cuba (1959-60)
Guatemala (1960)
Congo (1964)
Peru (1965)
Laos (1964-73),
Vietnam (1961-73)
Cambodia (1969-70)
Guatemala (1967-69)
Grenada (1983),
Libya (1986)
El Salvador (1980s)
Nicaragua (1980s)
Panama (1989)
Iraq (1991-present)
Sudan (1998)
Afghanistan (1998)
Yugoslavia (1999).

We have bombed each of these countries in turn, and in NO case did a democratic government, respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result. Through our weapons and/or proxies, innocent civilians of Indonesia, East Timor, Chile, Nicaragua and Palestine have also been victims of the United States. Is it any wonder that the level of hatred of the United States is so high?

Former President Jimmy Carter stated:

"We have only to go to Lebanon, to Syria, to Jordan, to witness firsthand the intense hatred among many people for the United States, because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers, women and children and farmers and housewives, in those villages around Beirut...as a result, we have become a kind of Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful.
That is what precipitated the taking of hostages and that is what has precipitated some terrorist attacks."
Source for this quote: New York Times - 26th March 1989

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND CIVILISED VALUES?

As Thompson's list demonstrates, the US cares not a jot for democracy and civilised values when it comes to other peoples of the world. Aren't anybody else's innocent lives worth the same as Americans ? It isn't just an opinion to say no, they do not.

From the list two come to mind specifically: Cambodia and Iraq.

Cambodia was bombed in secret for 4 years by US B-52 planes, and the flight logs falsified to cover up the crime. Over a MILLION Cambodians were killed. When the American people found out, they took to the streets in their thousands to protest. The American government called out the National Guard and shot at them. That was the incident at Kent State university. The CIA's directorate of Operations concluded that the Khmer Rouge used these bombings as a recruitment tool:
"They are using damage caused by [US} B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda. This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of a number of young men. Residents [....] say that the propaganda has been effective with refugees in areas which have been subject to B-52 strikes."
Source: CIA's Directorate of Operations, May 2nd 1973, quoted by John Pilger in 'Heroes'

Iraq was bombed into a pre-industrial age,and the US targeted the water supply and sanitation systems,(as well as electrical infrastructure) in order to deliberately foster epidemics of disease amongst the civilian population. Recently declassified Defence Intelligence Agency documents categorically state the US awareness and intention. Professor Thomas Nagy of Georgetown University has been investigating this for over a year, and his article in The Progressive magazine prompted Representative Cynthia McKinney, D-GA, at a House hearing on 6/7/01 to state:

"Attacking the Iraqi public drinking water supply flagrantly targets civilians and is a violation of the Geneva Convention and of the fundamental laws of civilized nations."

ATTACKING THE WATER on the main page.
Robert Gates, US National Security Advisor, made clear who it was who would suffer in the aftermath.
Note that he did not say the Iraqi regime....

"Iraqis will be made to pay the price while Saddam Hussein is in power. Any easing of sanctions will be considered only when there is a new government." Source: Los Angeles Times, 9th May 1991

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked whether the deaths of over 500,000 children in Iraq due to sanctions was a price worth paying. Albright did not dispute the figure of 500,000 children.

She replied:
"This is a very hard choice, but the price....we think the price is worth it." Source: 60 Minutes, CBS Television, 12th May 1996

The indirect targeting of civilians through starvation was discussed during the Vietnam war:

"Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China and the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however - if handled right - might offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million) unless food is provided - which we could offer to do 'at the conference table'."

• John McNaughton, US State Department Source: 'The Mentality of the Backroom Boys' - Article by Noam Chomsky, 1973

In the aftermath of Vietnam, similar callousness was expressed:

"To put it in terms of a Chinese dialectic, United States policy is exactly to squeeze Vietnam to rely on the Soviet Union: then Vietnam will find the Soviet Union can not meet all its' needs.
[....] If Vietnam suffers economic hardships, I think that is just great."

• Roger Sullivan, US National Security Council, addressing a US delegation who had travelled to the White House with a petition requesting the US Government to allow humanitarian assistance to be sent to Vietnam [...] Source: Anthony Barrett, The New Statesman, August 22nd 1980

Who is the biggest arms dealer in the world? Which is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons? Which country refused to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child? Who has the greatest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the world? Who spends more on weapons than Russia and China combined mulitiplied by a factor of seven?
Who pulled out of the Kyoto climate protocol? Who refused to attend the conference on racism? (to list but a few)

The answer: America.

The historical record clearly shows that the American government has no concern for life, democracy or civilised values in the slightest if the people involved are not American, and if they stand in the way of American consumerism, as the following clearly shows:

'We have about 60% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its' population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

• George Kennan, former Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, Document PPS23, 24th February 1948 Source: 'The Chomsky Reader'