"War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits keep Spinning us to death"

LA Times Book Review today, Calendar section page 12, by Russ Baker..

"Does the unspooling Iraq saga fill you with a disquieting sense of deja vu? Feel like you've been there, done that, been lied to and spun in this manner somewhere else, at some other point in time? Well, that's because you have.

"(Norman) Solomon offers 16 brutally persuasive chapters, each centered on a perennial falsehood, such as "If This War Is Wrong, Congress Will Stop It", "This Is About Human Rights", and "This Is Not at All About Oil or Corporate Profits".

"One insidious whopper- that American war leaders always yearn for peace- runs counter to such evidence as the Nixon tapes, in which the president, who publicly expressed concern about the Indochina carnage, is caught on the White House recording system discussing with Henry A. Kissinger an extension of the bombing to new targets in North Vietnam:

Nixon: "I still think wew ought to take the dikes out... Will that drown people?"
Kissinger: "About 200,000 people."
Nixon: "No, no, no... I'd rather use the nuclear bomb... I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ's sakes."