Sort-of on-topic read for this group...

I'm almost finished reading James Bradley's book "The China Mirage." Highly recommended.

Not a new story, but still a fascinating one: how Americans were bamboozled for decades by the idea that millions of ordinary Chinese people were just aching to become American-style Christians. And good customers for American business. Plus the larger story of how that belief hobbled U.S. foreign policy for decades.

And where did that idea come from? From the "China Lobby." Which mostly meant propaganda generated by the amazing Soong family, who could teach even the Bu$h clan a few lessons in grifting. That dynasty started with "Charley" Soong. Old Charley visited North Carolina as a young man and got converted by the Southern Methodists. He returned to China and made millions of dollars publishing Bibles.

Then there were the American missionaries, constantly pumping out fantasies about the Chinese people hungering for Jebus. Especially the son of one missionary, Henry Luce, founder of the Time-Life media empire.

The China Lobby ship really came in with WWII. Luce spilled barrels of ink promoting the corrupt and incompetent Chiang Kai-Shek as the True Leader of China. (Chiang was conveniently married to Old Charley Soong's youngest daughter.)

The wheels started coming off during the war, when FDR sent the obvious choice to China as a military advisor - Gen. Joseph Stilwell, who had lived in China and spoke Chinese.

Which unfortunately meant Stilwell could see right thru the mirage. He once told a reporter off the record: "The trouble in China is simple. We are allied to an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious peasant son-of-a-bitch." As you might guess, Stilwell was fired at the insistence of the Chiang gang.

Chiang probably wasn't illiterate. In just about every puff-piece Luce article, Chiang mentioned that he read his Bible daily.

President Harry Truman eventually had to deal with the Chiang-Soong clan and gave them glowing reviews: "I discovered after some time that Chiang Kai-Shek and the Madame and their families, the Soong family and the Kungs, were all thieves...they stole seven hundred and fifty million dollars out of the 3.5 billion that we sent to Chiang...that's the money that was used and is still being used for the so-called China Lobby...Every damn one of them ought to be in jail, and I'd like to live to see the day they are."