Stephen Lendman

False flags are an American tradition. They go way back. The Boston bombings appear the latest. - Notable earlier false flags or incidents approximating them include:

■ In 1845, America lawlessly annexed Texas. It was Mexican territory. President James Polk deployed US troops. A future president led them. General Zachary Taylor paraded them along the disputed border. In May 1846, Polk told cabinet officials that if Mexican forces retaliated, he'd ask Congress to declare war. He wanted it whether or not Mexico attacked. After an incident occurred, Polk told Congress: "Mexico has passed the boundary of the US and shed American blood on American soil." The Mexican War followed. Half of Mexico was annexed. Included were California, Utah, Nevada, as well as parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming and Colorado. The Rio Grande became the Texas-Mexico border.

■ In 1898, Cubans neared freeing themselves from Spanish colonial rule. US President William McKinley promised to respect its sovereignty. In January 1898, the USS Maine entered Havana harbor. Allegedly it was to protect US Consul Fitzhugh Lee and other American citizens. On February 15, a huge explosion sank the Maine. Doing so killed 266 crew members. The Spanish-American war followed. At the time, publisher William Randolph Hearst hyped the big lie. He claimed Spain sunk the Maine. An internal coal bunker explosion caused it. Notably Hearst told his Havana illustrator: "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." Big lies launch them. Doing so enlists public support. America became Cuba's colonial power. The Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Canal Zone, Puerto Rico and other territories were annexed.

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Daniel Denvir

If you thought you knew all there was to know about the Vietnam War, you were wrong. For example: ever heard of the "Mere Gook Rule," a code of conduct the US military came up with in order to make it easier for soldiers to murder Vietnamese civilians without feeling too bad about it? ("It's only a mere gook you're killing!")

Well, few people knew about this bit of history either until author Nick Turse discovered it in secret US military archives, which he used as the primary sources for his new(ish) book, Kill Everything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. The book is based on Turse's discovery of theretofore secret internal military investigations of US-perpetrated atrocities alongside extensive reporting in Vietnam and among American veterans, and it reminds us that the most significant fact about the Vietnam War is its most overlooked: massive and devastating Vietnamese civilian suffering.

The debate over the US's war in Vietnam continues to hang over this country's most recent and techno-futuristic imperial adventures. Nick's book makes for timely if extraordinarily painful reading, and I sat down with him recently to talk about the ongoing relevance of Vietnam, massacres, and secretly photocopying whole US government archives.

VICE: Your book documents how the American war in Vietnam was a fight systemically waged against the civilian population. How does this account that you documented differ from the Vietnam war as it's popularly remembered in the United States today?

Nick Turse: We have 30,000 books in print on the Vietnam War, and most of them deal with the American experience. They focus on American soldiers, on strategy, tactics, generals, or diplomacy out of Washington and the war managers there. But I didn't see any that really attempted to tell the complete story of what I came to see as the signature aspect of the conflict, which was Vietnamese civilian suffering. Millions of Vietnamese were killed, wounded, or made refugees by deliberate US policies, like the almost unrestrained bombing and artillery shelling across wide swaths of the countryside. That is, deliberate policies dictated at the highest levels of the US military. But any discussion of Vietnamese civilian suffering is condensed down to a couple pages or paragraphs on the massacre at My Lai.

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