September 1, 2013
A look at major U.S. military strikes as ordered by the last five U.S. presidents and the degree of international support behind the actions. What was missing from the initial report below was the number of civilian casualties, and the truth behind the intervention.
U.S. list of wars since Regan:
http://www.orrazz.com/2013/08/a-guide-to...itary.html
Lebanese Civil War, was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon, lasting from 1975 to 1990 and resulting in an estimated 120,000 fatalities. Today approximately 76,000 people remain displaced within Lebanon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War
On October 25, U.S. Marines invaded Grenada, where they encountered unexpectedly heavy antiaircraft fire and ground resistance by the Cuban soldiers and laborers building the controversial airstrip. In two days they subdued the air and ground forces.
Reagan's credibility was bolstered by what the 5,000-strong American invading force found on the island: a cache of weapons that could arm 10,000 men -- automatic rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, antiaircraft guns, howitzers, cannon, armored vehicles and coastal patrol boats. In all, out of 800 Cubans, 59 were killed, 25 were wounded, and the rest were returned to Havana upon surrender. Forty-five Grenadians died, and 337 were wounded. America also suffered casualties: 19 dead and 119 wounded. The medical students came home unharmed.
For Reagan, Grenada was an unmitigated success: a defeat of Communism and Castro, and a warning to the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Fortunately for Reagan, by the time of the 1984 election, the Grenada success replaced the bitter memory of the massacre at Lebanon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada
United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, comprised air-strikes by the United States against Libya on 15 April 1986. The attack was carried out by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps via air-strikes, in response to the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing. There were reportedly 40 Libyan casualties and one US plane shot down killing two airmen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Unite...g_of_Libya
Panama invasion in 1989, according to official Pentagon figures, 516 Panamanians were killed during the invasion; however, an internal Army memo estimated the number at 1,000.
The UN estimated 500 deaths whilst Americas Watch found that around 300 civilians died. President Guillermo Endara said that "less than 600 Panamanians" died during the entire invasion
The U.S. lost 23 troops and 325 were wounded (WIA). The U.S. Southern Command, then based on Quarry Heights in Panama, estimated the number of Panamanian military dead at 205, lower than its original estimate of 314.
Noriega had sided with the U.S. rather than the USSR in Central America, notably in sabotaging the forces of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and the revolutionaries of the FMLN group in El Salvador. Noriega received upwards of $100,000 per year from the 1960s until the 1980s, when his salary was increased to $200,000 per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta..._of_Panama
Although there were human rights abuses committed in Kuwait by the invading Iraqi military, the ones best known in the U.S. were inventions of the public relations firm hired by the government of Kuwait to influence U.S. opinion in favor of military intervention.
Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the U.S. It hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 milli.on, paid by Kuwait's government.
Among many other means of influencing U.S. opinion (distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to U.S. soldiers deployed in the region, 'Free Kuwait' T-shirts and speakers to college campuses, and dozens of video news releases to television stations), the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of members of the U.S. Congress in which a woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor.
This was the lie that was used once again in the second invasion by both Bush presidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
THE U.S./NATO military intervention in Libya has revived an important question for the left: Can U.S. forces be deployed for humanitarian ends?
The U.S.-led invasion of Somalia in 1992 offers critical lessons. As with Libya today, some on the left were tripped up by the question posed by Somalia—namely, whether to support Western military intervention when it was cloaked in statements about peace and altruism.
In continuing George Bush Sr.’s “Operation Restore Hope” in Somalia, Bill Clinton declared the U.S. military to be a “force for good”—and this approach for using American forces framed much of U.S. foreign policy in the era following the demise of the USSR, from Somalia to Haiti to the war in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Under the cover of “humanitarian intervention,” politicians shored up progressive support and disguised their true motives—to push through a neoliberal economic agenda, crush resistance to the empire, and build a network of compliant regimes.
http://isreview.org/issue/77/making-soma...mare-worse
In 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered U.S. warships stationed in the Persian Gulf and in the Red Sea to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in downtown Baghdad.
In all, 23 Tomahawk missiles were fired from the USS Peterson in the Red Sea and from the cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the Persian Gulf, destroying the building and, according to Iraqi accounts, killing at least eight civilians.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24213.html
Mogadishu more commonly referred to as Black Hawk Down or, locally, as the Day of the Rangers (Somali: Maalintii Rangers), was part of Operation Gothic Serpent and was fought on 3 and 4 October 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, between forces of the United States supported by UNOSOM II, and Somali militiamen loyal to the self-proclaimed president-to-be Mohamed Farrah Aidid who had support from armed civilian fighter.
The book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War estimates more than 700 Somali militiamen dead and more than 1,000 wounded, but the Somali National Alliance in a Frontline documentary on American television acknowledged only 133 killed in the whole battle.
The Somali casualties were reported in The Washington Post as 312 killed and 814 wounded. The Pentagon initially reported five American soldiers were killed, but the toll was actually 18 American soldiers dead and 73 wounded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_...%281993%29
On the night of September 29, 1991, Haitian army officers launched a coup d'état against the country's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
By the next afternoon, soldiers had arrested Aristide and had started gunning down coup opponents in the street. The toll would reach more than 3,000 over the next three years.
US liberals didn't take long to see that the Haitian crisis could provide a good test case for the newly fashionable doctrine of "humanitarian intervention."
Within days of the coup, Robert Pastor, a national security aide to former president Jimmy Carter, was hinting at the possibility of military intervention by the Organization of American States (OAS).
The OAS needed "sufficient leverage to assure the desired outcome," he said; it should "send a clear message to the [Haitian] military of the consequences of its failure to step down." (NYT, Oct. 3, 1991)
http://ww4report.com/node/10053
The First Chechen War, also known as the War in Chechnya, was a conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought from December 1994 to August 1996.
Although there are no accurate figures for the number of Chechen militants killed, various estimates put the number at about 3,000 to over 15,000 deaths.
Various figures estimate the number of civilian deaths at between 30,000 and 100,000 killed and possibly over 200,000 injured, while more than 500,000 people were displaced by the conflict, which left cities and villages across the republic in ruins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War
The 1996 cruise missile strikes on Iraq (Operation Desert Strike) occurred in September 1996 during the Kurdish Civil War. It involved a joint United States Navy-United States Air Force strike against air defense targets in southern Iraq.
Navy ships and Air Force B-52 bombers fired a total of 27 cruise missiles at "selected air defense targets" in southern Iraq for about a 45-minute period beginning mid-morning, the Pentagon told CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9609/03/iraq.clinton/
The August 1998 bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan (codenamed Operation Infinite Reach by the United States) were American cruise missile strikes on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20, 1998.
The failure of the cruise missiles to eliminate their targets would lead to an acceleration in the American program to develop unmanned combat air vehicles.
This was the beginning of creating killers in the sky by way of drone attacks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_mis...st_1998%29
The December 1998 bombing of Iraq (code-named Operation Desert Fox) was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from December 16, 1998, to December 19, 1998, by the United States and United Kingdom.
Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst William Arkin contended in his Washington Post column January, 1999 that the operation had less to do with WMD and more to do with destabilizing the Iraqi government.
Some critics[who?] of the Clinton administration expressed concern over the timing of Operation Desert Fox. The four-day bombing campaign occurred at the same time the U.S. House of Representatives was conducting the impeachment hearing of President Clinton.
There were dozens of Iraqi civilians killed by missiles that missed their targets, possibly as many or more Iraqi military, and no U.S. or British casualties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of...%281998%29
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. NATO's bombing campaign involved 1,000 aircraft operating from air bases in Italy and Germany, and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt stationed in the Adriatic Sea.
At dusk, F/A-18 Hornets of the Spanish Air Force were the first NATO planes to bomb Belgrade and perform SEAD operations. BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from ships and submarines.
The U.S. was the dominant member of the coalition against Yugoslavia, although all NATO members were involved. During the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombi...Yugoslavia
On this day in 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces.
Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels.
The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States "war on terrorism" and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
War based on lies of a government creating crimes against humanity that exceeds all the crimes of leaders put together!
In an address to a joint-session of the U.S. Congress on 20 September 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban deliver Osama bin Laden and destroy bases of Al-Qaeda. "They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate," he said.
The first step in control over the poppy fields and control of the world heroin market. American soldiers first battle to protect a market that now is breaking records for production thanks to the Bush administration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afg...present%29
The 2003 invasion of Iraq lasted from 19 March 2003 to 1 May 2003, and signaled the start of the conflict that later came to be known as the Iraq War, which was incited under WMD pretext and dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom by the United States.
According to U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the coalition mission was "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people."
We now know that these were lies for war!
The Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division (SAD) teams, consisting of the 2/504 PIR and the 7th special forces group were the first U.S. forces to enter Iraq, in July 2002, before the main invasion.
In the 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs" Once again repeating a lie, that he admitted later was a mistake.
Even though On 5 February 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations General Assembly, continuing U.S. efforts to gain UN authorization for an invasion, adding to the lengthy list of lies to get U.S. troops into Iraq.
The Lancet Survey estimated 654,965 "excess deaths" to June 2006; and the Opinion Research Business Survey estimated 1,033,000 "deaths as a result of the conflict", to April 2009.
John Tirman has praised as "most accurate" the review published in Conflict and Health 7 March 2008, "Iraq War mortality estimates: A systematic review"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq
The Libyan Civil War, also referred to as the Libyan Revolution was a 2011 armed conflict in the North African country of Libya, fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and western backed forces, seeking to oust his government.
Libya's Human Development Index in 2010 was the highest in Africa and greater than that of Saudi Arabia. Libya had welfare systems allowing access to free education, free healthcare, and financial assistance for housing, while the Great Manmade River was built to allow free access to fresh water across large parts of the country.
Gaddafi said that he was planning to combat corruption in the state by proposing reforms where oil profits are handed out directly to the country's five million peoplerather than to government bodies, stating that "as long as money is administered by a government body, there would be theft and corruption."
The threat to the oil global cabal was the reason their armies UK/US/French soldiers moved in to protect a regime that controls the flow and control of oil!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_civil_war
When you look at all these wars, and the trillions of taxpayer dollars spent, the lives lost, and families torn apart from wars from greed under the guise of humanitarian efforts, nothing for any of these countries got better.
No only did U.S. intervention destroy these nations...they have never recovered!
So why does war continue?
To satisfy those who serve the master of all things evil!
Clearly there is no other reason.
No justice...no peace...
Friendship/Love/Respect for all living things...