I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligentsia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own. Ashraf Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror
I’ve spoken recently of the freedom fighters of Nicaragua. You know the truth about them. You know who they’re fighting and why. They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance. We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong. Ronald Reagan
The United States does not start fights. Ronald Reagan
The spectre of Marxist-Leninist controlled governments with ideological and political loyalties to the Soviet Union poses a direct challenge to which we must respond. They are the focus of evil in the modern world. Ronald Reagan
We must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient – that we are only 6 percent of the world’s population – that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind – that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity – and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem. John F Kennedy, November 1961
Acting on our own, by ourselves, we cannot establish justice throughout the world; we cannot insure its domestic tranquility, or provide for its common defense, or promote its general welfare, or secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. But joined with other free nations, we can do all this and more. We can assist the developing nations to throw off the yoke of poverty. We can balance our worldwide trade and payments at the highest possible level of growth. We can mount a deterrent powerful enough to deter any aggression. And ultimately we can help to achieve a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion. John F Kennedy, July 1962
We must seek a world of peace – a world in which peoples dwell together in mutual respect and work together in mutual regard – a world where peace is not a mere interlude between wars, but an incentive to the creative energies of humanity. We will not find such a peace today, or even tomorrow. The obstacles to hope are large and menacing. Yet the goal of a peaceful world – today and tomorrow – must shape our decisions and inspire our purposes. So we are all idealists. We are all visionaries. Let it not be said of this Atlantic generation that we left ideals and visions to the past, nor purpose and determination to our adversaries. We have come too far, we have sacrificed too much, to disdain the future now. John F Kennedy, June 1963
What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. John F Kennedy, 10th June 1963
The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough – more than enough – of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on – not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace. ibid.
It’s pretty well known that the CIA has been installing friendly dictators around the world for years. Rob Walton
The CIA is not an intelligence agency. The CIA is the covert extra arm of the presidency. And in that capacity it supports or overthrows other governments and it utilises the techniques of disinformation. Ralph McGehee, former CIA Intelligence officer
The CIA makes the Mafia look like a Sunday School class ... Look at the terrorist acts that have occurred – the CIA behind most if not all of them. Ted Gunderson, former CIA agent
And it is one such [Nazi] advisory panel that gave birth to the National Security Council. The NSC then combined with the Council on Foreign Relations and spawned its muscle, the CIA ... working closely with its counterpart, MOSAD, the CIA has managed to undermine nations from within, by using false flag operations, propaganda and terrorism. And please understand that these organisations were created on the recommendation of top level Nazis, and it was founded and operated on Nazi principles. The CIA has since become the number one trafficker of drugs and human cargo in the world. The CIA are not the good guys; they are anything but. They are a criminal cabal disguised as an Intelligence agency that is based on Nazi principles, has unlimited resources, both financially and militarily, and they are answerable to no-one. The CIA and MOSAD virtually operate as the one organisation. Either they or their agents are responsible for virtually all terrorist bombings the world has seen in the last sixty years. Their prime mandate is to undermine world security and pave the way for a global government controlled by a global monetary system. The Big Picture – FINAL
But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. US national security, as preached by US leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people. Philip Agee, CIA Diary 1975
Secret CIA operations constitute the usually unseen efforts to shore up unjust, unpopular, minority governments, always with the hope that overt military intervention ... will not be necessary. The more successful CIA operations are, the more remote overt intervention becomes, and the more remote become reforms. Latin America in the 1960s is all the proof one needs. ibid.
A considerable proportion of the developed world’s prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries’ primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries – it means keeping poor people poor. ibid.
Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty. ibid.
In order to survive, nations need strong intelligence services. But the idea that the CIA is primarily an intelligence-gathering operation is itself one of the agency's greatest propaganda triumphs. Despite its name, the Central Intelligence Agency’s main purpose is, and has always been, carrying out covert operations involving economic warfare, rigged elections, assassinations and even genocide. The CIA is also expert at distorting intelligence to justify its own goals, and this ‘disinformation’ leads to dangerous illusions among our policymakers. But covert operations are its life’s blood. The litany of illegal, murderous CIA activity is enough to chill the bones of anyone who cares about liberty and justice. As long as the CIA exists, our government can break any law it chooses in the name of national security. Mark Zepezauer, The CIA’s Greatest Hits 2002
Coming to grips with these US/CIA activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed – and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola ... and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people would not have died if US tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert political and military activities and destabilize societies.
The six million people the CIA has helped to kill are people of the Mitumba Mountains of the Congo, the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the hills of northern Nicaragua. They are people without ICBMs or armies or navies, incapable of doing physical damage to the United States, the 22,000 killed in Nicaragua, for example, are not Russians; they are not Cuban soldiers or advisors; they are not even mostly Sandinistas. A majority are rag-poor peasants, including large numbers of women and children.
Communists? Hardly, since the dead Nicaraguans are predominantly Roman Catholics. Enemies of the United States? That description doesn't fit either, because the thousands of witnesses who have lived in Nicaraguan villages with the people since 1979 testify that the Nicaraguans are the warmest people on the face of the earth, that they love people from the United States, and they simply cannot understand why our leaders would want to spend $1 billion on a Contra force designed to murder people and wreck the country. John Stockwell, Secret Third World Wars
The hypothesis that has gained strength which was said on television last night and which could soon blow up is that it was the same US imperial power that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist attack or act against its own people and against citizens from all over the world. Why? To justify the aggression that was immediately unleashed on Afghanistan, on Iraq and the threats against all of us and against Venezuela too. Hugo Chavez, 2006