False Claims Led to Attacks on Grenada, Iraq

Drip, drip, drip....

<clips>

Twenty years ago this past Saturday, 1,900 United States marines and paratroopers invaded the tiny Carribbean island of Grenada.

President Ronald Reagan claimed that the unrest following the recent overthrow and murder of Grenada's socialist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop had put the lives of more than 500 American medical students there at risk.

He said he was also concerned about the growing Communist influence in Grenada and suspected that an airport being constructed there would be used as a staging area for Cuban and Soviet troops. The invasion was "forced on us by events that have no precedent in the eastern Carribbean," Reagan said, so the United States "had no choice but to act strongly and decisively."

Grenada's tiny army was crushed overnight, almost 100 people were killed and the United States installed a provisional government. But the reasons the Reagan administration gave for invading Grenada turned out to be dubious. The medical students, it turns out, were never in any danger. The presumed plans for the airport and reports about an alleged stash of weapons were grossly exaggerated. Even the administration's claim that it was invited to invade Grenada by the concerned leaders of some neighboring Carribbean countries turned out to be dicey at best. But these were the days of the Cold War, when U.S. officials were driven by paranoia that Grenada would turn Communist and that the rest of the Caribbean would follow.

<http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vpmcc273511436oct27,0,5814333.column?coll=ny-news-columnists>

...meaning, I don't have a link handy for these:

a) The 'student' that radioed for US help from the medical school had recently 'retired' from the CIA the previous year.
b) This 'student' sent the message using a US military radio freqency
c) When the rest of the students were 'liberated', the reaction of most of them was 'liberated from what?'

If anyone is interested, I'm sure these facts are out there with an attribution somewhere on the net.

Some students asked a buddy of mine why we where there. He replied to rescue the medical students. They proceeeded to ask "from ?"

I respect you raising your voice on this. My father was also there, which is why I ask (he doesn't like to talk about the things he was involved in).

ended up moving into my building in Miami. His dad happened to be a Senator, so he got a knock on the door about a week in advance to let him know it was time to go.

If the students were in so much danger why didn't the CIA let the rest of them know it was time to go?

....and I wonder exactly how many wars America would have fought had our presidents not trumped up some pretext to take us in.

<clips>

It was 20 years ago that the United States invaded a tiny Caribbean island and, in a military move presaging the Iraq misadventure, executed a regime change that cost 88 lives.

Grenada had no mustachioed menace, managed no global reign of terror and certainly supplied none of the nation's oil. What attracted U.S. attention to the "Spice Island" was the ideology of its two top leaders: Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and his deputy, Bernard Coard. Both men were Marxist, and they came to power by staging a 1979 coup that overthrew one Eric Gairy. The coup caught the Reagan administration quite by surprise. Looking over the shoulders of Bishop and Coard, the CIA saw the expansionist plans of Fidel Castro and behind him the Soviet Union.

In the white heat of the Cold War, the United States rose up with all its special-forces might to smite this upstart island of some 90,000 mostly brown inhabitants. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 set the Americas beyond the reach of European expansionism and reserved the Caribbean as something of a private U.S. lake. Only Cuba stood in defiance.

There were to be no more Cubas.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1026-07.htm

Cuba was not exactly a "live and let live" sort of country back then, if I recall.

I'm not saying invading Grenada was right. In my opinion, it was a happy little war for Ronald Raygun's acting career.

Reuters
April 1, 2002
U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola - Historian

By REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and South Africa intervened
in Angola months before Cuban troops arrived in 1975, and not afterward as
Washington claimed, according to a historian who recently wrote a book on
the subject.

Piero Gleijeses, a professor at Johns Hopkins' School of International
Studies, said that President Gerald Ford's administration lied about Cuban
military presence to justify its covert operations against Marxist guerrillas.
Angola was a Portuguese colony until 1975.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger denied then and in his memoirs later that
the U.S. government knew that South African troops invaded Angola posing
as mercenaries in 1975, he said.

He also required the Central Intelligence Agency to rewrite a document on
Angola to show an earlier Cuban presence than was accurate, Gleijeses said
in an interview.

``Kissinger had the CIA rewrite its report to serve the political aim of the
administration, and so the poor CIA ended up lying,'' he said, speaking
tongue-in-cheek.

(snip/...)

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/cuba/gleijeses.htm

You can also locate the declassified papers from Kissinger discussing inviting Chinese participation, the Chinese balking due to the presence of South Africa in the operation, on the U.S. side, of course.

The advantage falls to the propagandists when Democrats allow them to explain history to them, which I'm sure you recognize.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - "Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricultural experts, but never as colonizers," said South African president Nelson Mandela at the opening of a Cuba-Southern Africa solidarity conference here October 6.

"They have shared the same trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment, and apartheid. Hundreds of Cubans have given their lives, literally, in a struggle that was, first and foremost, not theirs but ours. As Southern Africans we salute them. We vow never to forget this unparalleled example of selfless internationalism."

Mandela was referring to the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who served on internationalist missions in Angola from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. Cuban volunteer troops helped defeat successive invasions of that country by South Africa's apartheid regime, which was determined to block the Angolan people from realizing their hard- fought independence from Portugal.

The apartheid army was dealt a decisive military defeat at Cuito Cuanavale in late 1987 and was driven out of Angola. This victory paved the way for the independence of neighboring Namibia. By puncturing once and for all the myth of the white supremacists' invincibility, the outcome at Cuito Cuanavale gave another impulse to the battle against apartheid inside South Africa. In February 1990, the regime of F.W. De Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC). That same month Nelson Mandela triumphantly walked out of the Victor Verster prison in Cape Town, free for the first time in over 27 years.

In his speech at the conference, Mandela referred to his trip to Cuba in July 1991. During that visit, Mandela and Cuban president Fidel Castro appeared on the same platform for the first time, explaining why the struggles being waged by the people of South Africa and Cuba are the best examples for those everywhere seeking to rid the earth of racism and exploitation. (The speeches by Mandela and Castro on that occasion are available in the Pathfinder book How Far We Slaves Have Come! - see ad on page 9.)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/150.html

---

SPEECH BY PRESIDENT NELSON MANDELA AT THE BANQUET IN HONOUR OF PRESIDENT CASTRO OF CUBA.

Paarl, 4 September 1998

President Castro;

Your excellencies;

Ladies and Gentlemen,

You will not need my words, Mr. President, to sense the special place that the Cuban people occupy in the hearts of millions of South Africans. That you will know from the warmth of their welcome when you joined us four years ago for the inauguration of our democracy, and from today's rousing reception in our Parliament.

If today all South Africans enjoy the rights of democracy; if they are able at last to address the grinding poverty of a system that denied them even the most basic amenities of life, it is also because of Cuba's selfless support for the struggle to free all of South Africa's people and the countries of our region from the inhumane and destructive system of apartheid.

For that, we thank the Cuban people from the bottom of our heart.

Because your support has also come through teachers, builders and doctors whom you sent to our continent and through the training of many South Africans in your schools and universities, we are still reaping the harvest as we rebuild our country.

Inasmuch as Cuba was a home from home for many South Africans during the dark night of our oppression, we now welcome you home to the sunshine of our freedom.

http://www.polity.org.za/html/govdocs/speeches/1998/sp0904.html

(snip) Conflicting Missions also argues that Secretary Kissinger's account of the US role in Angola, most recently repeated in the third volume of his memoirs, is misleading. Testifying before Congress in 1976, Kissinger stated "We had no foreknowledge of South Africa's intentions, and in no way cooperated militarily." In Years of Renewal Dr. Kissinger also denied that the United States and South Africa had collaborated in the Angolan conflict; Gleijeses' research strongly suggests that they did. The book quotes Kissinger aide Joseph Sisco conceding that the Ford administration "certainly did not discourage" South Africa's intervention, and presents evidence that the CIA helped the South Africans ferry arms to key battlefronts. The book also reproduces portions of a declassified memorandum of conversation between Kissinger and Chinese leader Teng Hsiao-p'ing which shows that Chinese officials raised concerns about South Africa's involvement in Angola in response to Ford and Kissinger's entreaties for Beijing's continuing support. The memcon quotes President Ford as telling the Chinese "we had nothing to do with the South African involvement." Drawing on the Cuban documents, the book challenges Kissinger's account in his memoirs about the arrival of Cubans in Angola. The first Cuban military advisers did not arrive in Angola until late August 1975, and the Cubans did not participate in the fighting until late October, after South Africa had invaded.

In assessing the motivations of Cuba's foreign policy, Cuba's relations with the Soviet Union, and the nature of the Communist threat in Africa, Gleijeses shows that CIA and INR intelligence reports were often sophisticated and insightful, unlike the decisions of the policymakers in Washington. (snip/...)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/

Interesting declassified document, containing dialogue between Henry Kissinger and China's Vice Premier Teng, with references to Cuba, etc.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/gleijeses4.pdf

Thanks for the correction.

I knew back then Reagan was taking us for a ride in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Did not know we were also being misled about Angola.

wasn't in power in 1979.

Stupid mistake.

killing 241 Marines. That is what it was about, diverting attention.

Thanx!

the tourist industry for blurbs that had map like pictures so they could give them to the command staff.

An incredible wag the dog that US media bought and sold to the public - 0 heck, more Pentagon medals were given out for Grenada then for VietNam.

And now Ollie North and Fox News promote tours of the Reagan wisdom and battle site that proved that only the Reagan GOP could handle the threat to our liberty that was the 30 Cubab soldiers with rifles on Grenada at the airstrip being built. Pity we had to bomb the mental hospital - but shit happens in wars of liberty. And they hated us for our freedoms.

And Reagan as Gov in California put the mentally ill on the street by refusing to fund the replacement halfway homes for those being moved under court order out of the horrible warehouses for the insane and to said smaller facilities, and then as President in one of his first acts ended the Carter Mental Health bill and its funding - using the usual GOP cover of "block granting the money that would otherwise be spent on the mentally ill" to the states so that they could cut taxes on the rich, thus putting the nations mentally ill on the street. So, bombing the Grenda mental hospital was in character.

bombing, which was apparently a complete surprise. (9/11, anyone?). They had to make some sort of decisive action with a guaranteed, predictable outcome to draw focus away from their abyssmal intelligence failure.

Hmmm... wasn't some guy with the initials GB running the CIA at the time?

And...hasn't his widdle Georgie taken it all to a higher level? Gee, if we had the same media back then, 75% of the population would have believed that Grenada was responsible for the bombing in Beirut.

Let's keep it real clear. BUSH was the man in charge of the reagan camp.

in fact one one of the founding members of the CIA?

Oh I have an idea let's sell TOW (Tube fired Optically Wire guided missiles) to the same damned people who did THIS (Semper Fi Ollie) to "free hostages" (though we do NOT negotiate with terrorists-we only establish them) and send money to an operation EXPRESSLY forbiddden by the Congress of the United States of America and then lie about it and cover it up and get everyone off the hook with last minute pardons and acquittals by Federal Society judges.

But then there was a girl in a beret.............oddly now every member of the military wears a beret (which is NOT French) even though it pissed off every former member of the DESERVING beret wearing groups and was the ONLY actual thing W did for the military since siezing office.

I know I never will. You don't forget something like that. Worst feeling in the world, when I realized the truth about that atrocity.

I still can't sleep some nights, thinking about it.

Cold war was over-no bad guy there

uh uh uh Noreiga yeah he's abad guy! But sir he is OUR bad guy

Nope we got nothing else he's our chief number 1 bad guy ATTACK!

"Uh, sir - Manuel's giving us some problems with the drug shipments."

"He's a terrorist! GET HIM!"

And kill 3,000 civilians in the process...

Sometimes I am ashamed to be an American. And I am angrier than hell at how the US government lied to and manipulated my father for decades.

:shrug:

NT!

good golly, bout time they figured out the GRENADA thing.

Can't have a successful black run socialist country now CAN we!?

is a NICKNAME for it.

Put it all together, whatta ya got?

THE BUSH REGIME.

I was teaching part-time at a college at the time, and I frequently had coffee with one of the older professors, a respected professor of American history.

I came to campus after hearing the news of the invasion on the radio, went into the campus coffee shop, saw Carl (the Am. history prof) sitting at a table by the window, and went to join him.

"I'm ashamed to be an American today," I said.

He shook his head sadly, "So am I."

That invasion was the biggest put-up job of my lifetime, and even more shameful was the jubilant reaction of the "kick somebody's ass" crowd around the country. People were running around waving flags and getting drunk because the U.S. had succeeded in an exceedingly inept invasion of an essentially unarmed island 30 miles long.

The Grenada invasion was the first time I realized how whorish the U.S. press is. Of course, I listened to NPR's coverage, and for the most part, they just relayed official government press releases. They kept saying that they had no idea what was going on because they were not allowed onto the island.

Minnesota Public Radio also broadcast CBC's As It Happens, and of course, they were also covering the Grenada invasion. However, unlike the whimpering NPR reporters, the CBC reporters just picked up the phone and called people in Grenada to ask what was going on.

I heard a phone interview with the president of the American medical school, who explained that the rebel leader had phoned him to assure him that the rebels had no ill will towards the medical school and in fact valued it as a source of foreign exchange. The rebel leader even gave him a phone number to call if any rogue rebels tried anything funny.

We all saw the photo of a "rescued" student kissing the ground in Miami. I just know that some psy op type figured out who the hammiest student was and talked him into putting on that act.

Anyway, the Canadian account of the invasion was 180 degrees from the account that we were fed here in the U.S. About four years later, a Wall Street Journal reporter named Jonathan Kwitny published a book called *Endless Enemies,* and in one of the chapters, he basically confirmed everything that the Canadians had said. Yet I never heard anything about this in the U.S. press.

By the way, another famous photo from the Grenada invasion was of white painted grafitti saying, "Thank you President Reagan. God bless America."

Eight years later, when Panama was invaded, we saw photos of white painted grafitti saying, "Thank you President Bush. God bless America."

One speaker I heard in the late 1980s was a sociologist whose field of expertise was the Caribbean, and he knew lots of people in Grenada. His friends told him that the grafitti there had been painted in the middle of the night by white men in panel trucks.

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, no one ever lost political power underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

...when so many events from the past were manufactured by certain U. S. interests to start wars?

1) Vietnam - The Tonkin Gulf?

2) WWII - Pearl Harbor?

3) WWI - The "Lusitania"?

4) Spanish-American War - The "Maine"?

5) The Mexican War - Provocations along the Mexican-Texas border prior to 1847?

...to our precious supply of nutmegs.