Setting Precedent: A History of U.S. Military Occupational Crimes By Curtis B. Maynard

Al-Jazeerah, June 22, 2006

The United States government and military have engaged in wars that have resulted in the occupation of former belligerents on numerous past occasions, including the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War and most recently the Gulf War and the War in Iraq. What is interesting about this inevitable consequence of defeat is that often the American public is misled about the occupation, its goals, direction and purpose. This paper will delve into a comparative generalization between the American occupation of Post War Germany and its present occupation of Iraq.

The crimes the U.S. Military has been accused of committing in Iraq are not without precedent. In most cases, the United States Military was first accused of eerily simial atrocities against German POWs and civilians in post-War Germany.

Today, the United States government and its military have developed an extremely bad reputation internationally. Very often, the stories told by the American government through the western media in respect to the occupation in Iraq are quickly proven to be inaccurate. So inaccurate in fact, that they can only be appropriately termed lies. When the lies themselves become blatantly apparent, most often as the result of an independent media investigation and/or by bloggers on the Internet, the stories these lies initially sought to cover-up are then ignored, dropped, or distorted by further exaggeration.

Few people today are completely unaware of the duplicity associated with the War in Iraq and the subsequent occupation of the Iraqi nation. What most people may be unaware of however is that lying to the American people is something the United States government has become quite proficient at, especially as it relates to the occupation of former belligerents, the government has I fact been practicing such deception for generations. The United States government has in the past exploited its presence in the nations it has defeated to cover up crimes that it has itself committed, both during the war and during the latter occupation itself. These crimes vary from intentionally causing the deaths of “at least 800,000” German POWs, by way of “exposure, unsanitary conditions, disease and starvation,” to machine gunning captured and helpless German Prisoners of War, to fabricating, falsifying and omitting diary entries of the former Nazi leadership in order to cover-up horrendous acts committed by the Anglo-Allies during the Italian Campaign in 1943.

The fact is that the today American government is quickly losing credibility on the International stage and a great deal of this has to do with its past behavior in respect to the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and its subsequent efforts to conceal these facts. Today the United States government strands accused of subjecting human beings to torture, something the United States has condemned in the past; as have other civilized nations. Today the United States Military stands accused of committing atrocities in Iraq, something it vociferously denies, but the evidence weighs heavily against this disclaimer. Today the United States Military stands accused of employing poison gas against Iraqi insurgents and civilians, something it has self-righteously accused the former Iraqi regime of committing against its own in the 1980s.

The possibility exists that this accusation that of using poison gas in Iraq, is nothing more than false propaganda, but the notion that the United States military’s might use toxic agents against human beings, despite its violation of the Geneva Gas Protocols isn’t without precedent.

When Peter Arnett was fired from CNN for spreading an allegedly unsubstantiated story that the United States military had intentionally used nerve agent in Laos during the Vietnam War, many Americans accepted the fact that it was untrue, rather than consider that Arnett’s story might have some merit. Arnett interviewed Admiral Thomas Moorer U.S.N. (ret), and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the story and he verified the story and stated further that he felt the use of poison gas was justified under the conditions it was used. When asked if nerve agent had been used during the Vietnam War, Melvin Laird the Secretary of Defense at the time stated that he was not aware of it, but would not dispute what Moorer had to say on the matter. This may appear a strange comment coming from Moorer’s civilian boss, but the fact of that matter was, Laird was excluded from much of what the Nixon-Kissinger White House did during his tenure, and Moorer was not. Rather than deny the allegations outright, former National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger had no comment whatsoever. Unfortunately for Arnett, Moorer eventually retracted his statement, and CNN fired Arnett for distorting the story.

What is possibly the most important issue here is not so much what Americans believe to be true, but what people from other nations believe to be accurate. Unknown to most Americans, the U.S. military has been accused of using chemical and biological agents against its enemies in the past. Both North Korea and China accused the U.S. military of engaging in biological warfare during the Korean War. The use of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War cannot conceivably be considered anything else but the implementation of a chemical agent during wartime. The U.S. military may not have been aware of the carcinogenic nature of Agent Orange in the 1960s and early 1970s, but the fact of the matter was that it poisoned hundreds of thousands of human beings, including a considerable number of U.S. servicemen. Americans may believe that these accusations were either unsubstantiated and therefore untrue, or as in the case of Agent Orange, accidental, but other nations do not necessarily take the same position.

Of course Admiral Thomas Moorer is arguably the best source one could possibly ask for in respect to such information, after all he was the highest ranking Military officer in the United States at the time the nerve agent was allegedly used in Laos. As noted above, the United States did deploy gas munitions to the European Theatre of Operations during the Second World War, which culminated in at least one serious accident that the United States government lied about and attempted to conceal from the American public.

The hypocrisy associated with the United States government isn’t confined to World War Two and the Vietnam era, it continues to this day. Torture violates International law, yet the United States government is engaged in it in Iraq and is busily manipulating the law in order to absolve itself of guilt, something it has done before and presumably will continue to do.

According to a former S.S. judge-advocate name Konrad Morgan, he had been pressured to testify at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal that Ilse Koch had tanned human skin and turned it into lampshades, something Morgan later called a legend and totally untrue. When he refused to lie on the stand, “The Americans almost killed me… They threatened three times to turn me over to the Russians or French or Poles.” The notorious S.S. Obersturmbannfuhrer Rudolf Hoess, first of three commandants of Auschwitz was likewise subjected to torture. According to Hoess, “At my first interrogation, evidence was obtained by beating me. I do not know what is in the record, although I signed it… Alcohol and the whip were too much for me.” Hoess was a mass murderer, of that there is no doubt, but for some inexplicable reason Hoess confessed to gassing two million persons between June 1941 and the end of 1943, when today the memorial plaque at Auschwitz enumerates a total of 1.5 million murdered, which deviates from Hoess’ confession by a substantial number, not to mention the fact that many more people were thought to have been gassed and murdered after 1943 and before the camp was liberated by the Soviets in January 1945. The point of bringing this to light isn’t to exonerate Hoess or to question the numbers murdered at Auschwitz, only to emphasize the likelihood that he was in fact tortured and moreover, tortured by American military personnel.

Morgan and Hoess weren’t the only Nazi officials that claimed to have been tortured, many of the defendants at Nuremberg claimed as much, including Julius Streicher, who stated, he had been repeatedly kicked in the genitals, forced to drink water from a urinal, and forced to open his mouth so that an American soldier could spit into it. Hans Frank too, the former governor of occupied Poland was beaten upon capture, despite having turned himself in to the Americans along with his highly incriminating diaries. In many cases the prisoners at Nuremberg were placed under considerable psychological stress after their families were apprehended by the Allies, in an effort to compel the prisoners to confess to crimes real or imagined.

Much of the above information in respect to the torture of former German civilian and military leaders was obtained from the writings of David Irving, a rather tainted historian who has in the past been accused of harboring National Socialist sympathies and allowing this bias to affect his historiography. Without a doubt Irving harbors an unconventional and even socially unacceptable view of history as it relates to the Third Reich and the Second World War, however because of this, students of history are afforded the unique opportunity of seeing certain events through the eyes of a historical nonconformist, which can be extremely revealing.

As far as bias itself is concerned, all historians are subject to it to a certain extent, and it cannot help but taint their subsequent research and writing. Bertrand Russell, a liberal labor activist and Winston Churchill had diametrically opposed perspectives on history as it related to the Second World War, yet both men are considered excellent historians in their own right. Churchill’s voluminous contributions to history in respect to his wartime memoirs are considered by many to be the most revealing sources associated with WWII, yet Churchill himself openly advocated deceptive policies, including outright lies, and is more responsible for the purging of incriminating British documents in the post war period than anyone else in recent memory. Bearing the above in mind when critiquing and/or condemning David Irving, the careful student of history should consider that like it or not, Irving is considered by many to be one of the foremost experts on the Nazi hierarchy and possibly the world’s greatest expert on the former Nazi Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels. Of course Irving’s writing should be critically examined, just as anyone else’s should, but if one wants to truly develop an objective opinion on the Second World War, one that encompasses a broad view and therefore understanding, Irving’s writing must be included in one’s research library.

The defendants at Nuremberg were guilty of innumerable crimes, including mass murder, slavery, conspiracy, corruption, theft, of this there is no doubt. However, this didn’t stop the American prosecution team from engaging in extremely unethical behavior, including coercing confessions from the prisoners, leading them to believe that certain conversations would be kept in confidence when they weren’t, utilizing psychologists to probe the minds of the prisoners in such a way as to provide the prosecution with a strategy to demoralize them individually and as a group. In short the actual prosecution of these men was a shameful example of American jurisprudence at work. This is not to say that these men were innocent, they weren’t, but in hindsight, the Nuremberg Military Tribunal appears to have been somewhat of a farce, a show trial in which the verdict was known the moment the Germans capitulated.

Several Nazis equally guilty in many respects as those later convicted and hanged were not charged with certain crimes, but were in fact treated with tenterhooks by the Americans. These two were Grand Admiral Erich Raeder and Admiral Karl Doenitz, the latter being the heir to the throne of the Third Reich after Hitler’s suicide. Both men were initially charged with Crimes Against Humanity along with many of the other Nuremberg defendants but were acquitted of these more serious crimes after the British and Americans had determined that although both had committed Crimes against Humanity in respect to unrestricted submarine warfare, so had the Americans and therefore it might prove embarrassing to have this uncomfortable fact brought to light in a public trial monitored by millions of radio listeners around the world. Francis Biddle, one of the judges at Nuremberg even went so far as to say in respect to Germany’s record of war crimes on the high seas that “Germany” had “waged a much cleaner war than we did,” meaning the United States Navy.

Much of these facts remain unknown to many people, not just Americans. In respect to conspiracy, the United States has outdone itself in the fabrication of history. Its efforts to conceal what happened at Bari, Italy in December of 1943 when the American merchant ship, the USS John Harvey blew up gassing much of the Italian city with its toxic cargo, has been highly successful and remains unknown to most Italian citizens to this day, despite the fact that it happened in their own country.

In respect to crimes against humanity, there is no doubt whatsoever that the United States government and military conspired in various ways to starve millions of Germans immediately following Germany’s capitulation. This may come as a shock to the reader, but documentary evidence leaves no other possible conclusion. James Bacque, the author of the book Other Losses, has exposed irrefutable evidence that the United States Army under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower intentionally enacted policies that led directly to the deaths of at least 800,000 German POWs after the end of the Second World War. Denigrated by critics for not having training in historiography or document analysis, Bacque nonetheless proves he possesses a considerable amount of aptitude in both areas, with the publication of Other Losses. Bacque relies almost exclusively on primary documentation, from such sources as The International Red Cross, U.S. Military archives, British and Canadian archives and a good bit of eyewitness testimony. Despite his critics, Bacque reveals that hundreds of thousands of Germans were systematically starved, and subjected to the effects of exposure, disease, and neglect. The reason Bacque is of extreme importance today is that once again the United States military is being accused of committing atrocities in an occupied country, and the military appears to be predictably falling back on the very same techniques it used in post war Germany in order to cover these facts up. Today very few serious people would argue the fact that the American media isn’t keeping the American people informed about what is happening in Iraq, except perhaps in the most superficial manner.

Today, it is a well-established fact that American troops have committed acts of torture at Abu Ghraib, an American prison in Iraq. The photographs of acts that cannot be described as anything other than torture have been splashed across the screen of world consciousness for many months as of April 2005. What isn’t so well known is whether high-ranking United States military officials sanctioned these illegal acts. At this juncture, the Army and civilian government have denied any knowledge that the acts were being committed. There is a tremendous amount of international and domestic skepticism in respect to this claim, however this isn’t being brought out into the light of day, it is being stifled by the mainstream news media. This isn’t a new phenomenon, according to Bacque the very same technique was applied in post war Germany in respect to hiding the number of German POWs that had died in American captivity over a relatively short period of time.

Bacque opined, “Once the half-dead men were discharged, however conflict between eyewitnesses and propaganda arose. The evidence of the witnesses lost credibility as it was repeated by word of mouth alone. It had the status of doubtful rumor from resentful individuals, lacking the authority of print.” The author was absolutely correct in identifying this very significant fact as perhaps the most important ingredient in the future fabrication of history, a history that would conveniently lay the responsibility of these men’s deaths on the Soviet Union, a fait accompli that escaped the notice of journalists and historians for decades. According to the Bacque, “Inside Germany, Eisenhower or his deputies ran everything, so censorship was much easier to maintain. Newspapers, radio stations, book publishers, even movie theaters had to have licenses to operate in the U.S. zone. For a long time they had no freedom, but much free propaganda.” Control over these information outlets was essential, it was only through these means that the occupational forces could create the kind of atmosphere described by Bacque:

In Germany after 1945, there were millions of biographies; there was no history. When the nation was cut in four, its history was fragmented by the political divisions, censorship, cover-up and fear of criticizing the USA and France. No intelligent public opinion was formed on the subject [Of German POWs] because no expression of it was allowed. The occupation of Germany resulted in an occupied mentality, which attempted to subject reason to unreasoning discipline.

Millions of Germans wondered what had happened to their loved ones, and it was during the Cold War that the Americans and French figured out a way in which to rid themselves of the burden of their responsibility by dumping it on the Russians. Through a bit of creative paper shuffling, propaganda and deceit, the Americans conveniently blamed the Russians, sating that it was they who had taken these German soldiers prisoner and thus in the words of Arthur Smith, author of the book Heinkehr aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, “The mystery about the location of Germany’s POWs ceased to be.” Dr. Joseph Goebbels’ the infamous Nazi Reichsminister of Propaganda and Enlightenment, was himself quite impressed with Anglo-American propaganda efforts, perhaps even somewhat envious, saying once, “When I think what the English are reporting in the way of news from the areas occupied by us and compare with it how little we do to meet it, I am all the more anxious to do something in a big way.”

What is important here is that one understands the power of the press, of mass communication. The United States military dominates and controls the news media in Iraq, dictating to the media whom it may and whom it may not include as reporters representing their various media corporations. In effect, this means that the U.S. military decides who reports what. If an independent journalist should discover something and worse attempt to disseminate it, there may well be consequences as suggested by a “companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was released from the clutches of Iraqi militants on March 4, 2004 only to be shot at by U.S. military troops, an act said to be “deliberate.” According to an interview Pier Scolari, a friend of Sgrena’s, “The Americans knew she was coming,” he said, “Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive.” Whether or not there was any merit to this claim or not remains to be seen, her companion Pier Scolari seemed to believe so and the story hit the Internet almost immediately. The Internet is a medium that the United States military has never had to contend with in respect to an occupation in the past, it remains to be seen how exactly they will deal with it.

Despite Bacque’s lack of credentials, Other Losses is an excellent book that emphasizes a point rarely discussed among historians and that is the psychological phenomenon of “selective distortion,” well understood in advertising circles. “This phenomenon can occur in two primary ways. If an individual wants to believe something is not true, then even in the face of an overwhelming amount of information disputing their original contention, they will still reject what they do not want to believe. Likewise, this can happen in the same manner with an individual that wants to believe something is in fact true, no matter the amount of material refuting that belief.” The imperative ingredient in creating this “selective distortion” is of course early access to the target, the individual, and the way this is generally achieved is through the indoctrination processes offered by the media.

In order for this to succeed however, the target must not be exposed to contradictory stimuli, at least not initially. Once the phenomenon has congealed however, those so exposed to it will inevitably develop what is known as “brand loyalty,” which is another advertising term relevant here because the “traditional macroeconomic view of advertising ‘holds that the main purpose of advertising is to manipulate or persuade’”

What Bacque brings to light in Other Losses, is that the United States military committed atrocities on a large scale in Post War Germany and utilized its monopoly of the German press to conceal that fact. Of that there is no doubt today. These atrocities included the exact same murderous outcome that the United States government was prosecuting Nazi war criminals for, at exactly the same time they were being subjected to the judgment of the Allies in Nuremberg. Bacque describes how the United States government “created” the illusion of a “World Food Shortage,” in concert with the American and German media, despite the fact that agricultural output in the United States and Canada had exceeded expectations and was at an all time high. This was done intentionally in order to excuse the fact that the United States was depriving the German population of foodstuffs, specifically wheat. Bacque never comes directly out and says why he suspects this was the case other than to suggest vengeance on the part of high-ranking U.S. Military officials including Eisenhower, whom “hated Germans… because the German is a beast,” according to a letter he wrote home to his wife in September 1944. In order to subvert the spirit of the Geneva Convention and the protection it afforded prisoners of war, Eisenhower changed the status of German POWs immediately after Germany surrendered to that of “disarmed enemy forces” [DEF], which conveniently placed them outside of the protection of the Convention as well as the monitoring of the Red Cross.

This too has been done today in respect to Iraqi prisoners as well as anyone deemed to be an international terrorist. The Iraqi prisoners are no longer considered POWs since Iraq capitulated in 2003 and they, along with any “international terrorists,” are instead referred to as “battlefield detainees,” for exactly the same reason that German POWs were forced to assume the designation of DEF’s, so that the Geneva Convention’s protection wouldn’t include them, nor would the Red Cross or Red Crescent be allowed to examine the conditions under which they are/were being held. Of course the United States military has been accused of committing crimes against these prisoners to include rape, torture, beatings, humiliation and murder, but there is no way to substantiate these claims at this time as the military won’t allow inspections to be conducted by independent organizations. Bacque provides precedent in the sense that he provides the reader with irrefutable evidence that the military did exactly the same thing sixty years ago, the question is, what exactly is going on at Guantanamo Bay and other military facilities in which these people are being held today? After reading Other Losses one no longer has the luxury of the uninformed, it is quite clear what the U.S. military did in post war Germany and the same thing could just as easily be happening in these “detainee” camps today.

How would the military go about covering up these crimes? Simple – they fabricate history and go after young Iraqi’s as early as possible, preferably right in the classroom, just as they did in Germany sixty years ago. Jonathon Zimmerman, an instructor of history at New York University and contributor to the Washington Post had this to say:

Here's a quick quiz from an Iraqi elementary-school textbook of the not-too-recent past: What do you get when you add three rocket-propelled grenades and four Kalashnikov rifles? If you guessed simply "seven weapons," you're wrong. The correct answer, of course, is "seven ways to kill the infidel enemy." Millions of children imbibed such propaganda in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Textbooks often bore a colorful picture of Hussein on the first page, smiling in his crisp battle fatigues. Inside, students encountered passages comparing him to the famous Arab warrior Saladin or to Nebuchadnezzar, the legendary Babylonian king… Propaganda afflicted every subject of study, including math and science. But it was sharpest in history and civics textbooks… When schools officially reopen in the fall, Iraq will need an entirely new set of textbooks. And that's where Creative Associates International comes in. The Washington-based firm has received a $62.5 million contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development to overhaul the Iraqi school system. Part of the job involves preparing a new set of "de-Baathified" textbooks, purging passages that fawn over Hussein and his Baath Party.

It is highly unlikely that any Iraqi textbook actually stated what Zimmerman suggests above, Iraq was a highly secular nation under Saddam Hussein and probably would have avoided the term “infidel,” at least in the context Zimmerman implies. The history instructor from New York University however neglects to provide us with a source, so we can’t know for certain. What is certain though is that de-Baathafied textbooks means essentially the same thing as “de-Nazified,” a change in the curriculum that will favor the occupying power, the United States of America. On can be sure than anything eluding to American war crimes will be absent from the final product, a product produced by the corporation Creative Associates International, a fitting name to be sure.

In the end, one must conclude that the United States government’s record is anything but illustrious and that present skepticism in regards to what is happening in Iraq is well founded. The Internet has taken on a life of its own; the mainstream media is losing its base as people flock instead to the Internet blogs. The mainstream media will do all that it can to discredit the Internet for being unregulated and uncensored, but it was the regulation and censorship engaged in by the mainstream media that has instead discredited it. The winds of change are truly blowing and short of massive censorship of the Internet it is unlikely that the western powers will forever be able to maintain their own subjective views of history.

Footnotes.

This statement relates specifically to the fact that the American people were led to believe that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi nation were in possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” had ties to Al Qaeda, and were likely involved in some manner with the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Subsequent investigations have not proved any of the above.

Bacque, James. Other Losses. Stoddart. 1989 Pg 2.
See photo and associated story. Index I.

An American liberty ship christened the USS John Harvey blew up in the harbor of the Italian city of Bari, releasing some 100+ tons of mustard gas it had surreptitiously transported to the ETO into the harbor and surrounding atmosphere. More than 80 allied personnel died and uncounted numbers of Italian civilians. Joseph Goebbels’ noted this fact as well as the fact that the associated Luftwaffe attack led to the sinking of some 17 Allied ships, a devastating loss to the Americans, second in severity only to Pearl Harbor, and unreported to the American people. On at least three occasions, these revealing entries were excised from the published version of Goebbels’ diaries released in 1948 and the facts associated with Bari weren’t exposed until almost three decades later. Maynard, Curtis. Bari Revisited: Remaining unanswered questions Related to the German Air Raid at Bari. Texas A&M University-Kingsville. 2003.

March 2, 2005 - Dr Khalid ash-Shaykhli, a representative of the Iraqi Ministry of Health who was authorized to assess health conditions in al-Fallujah after the end of the major battles there, announced that the surveys and studies which a medical team did in al-Fallujah and subsequently reported to the Ministry confirm that US forces used substances that are internationally prohibited -- including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals -- in the course of its attacks on the city. Mafkarat Al-Islam, Uruknet.Info. Site accessed on March 5, 2005.

TIME Magazine, June 15 1998. Vol. 151. No. 23.

The Nixon White House excluded both Secretary of State Rogers and Secretary of Defense Laird from much of its policy. This is a continuing theme throughout Seymour Hersh’s revealing expose of the Nixon administration. Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power. (New York: Summit Books, 1983).

Maynard, Curtis. Bari Revisited: Remaining unanswered questions Related to the German Air Raid at Bari. Texas A&M University-Kingsville. 2003.

Irving, David. Nuremberg The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications. 1996, pg 149 – 150. Quoted by John Toland from an interview with Konrad Morgan, October 25, 1971. This paper will not attempt to tread on the toxic ground of whether or not Koch did use human skin to have lampshades made, only that Konrad Morgan denied it.

Irving, David. Nuremberg The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications. 1996, pg 241.

Irving, David. Nuremberg The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications. 1996, pg 242.

A photo of the current memorial plaque can be seen at this link. It should be noted here as well that prior to 1990 the Auschwitz memorial plaque listed “4 million” victims at Auschwitz, this was changed in 1990 and now states “1.5 million.” A photo of the older plaque can be viewed at this link.

Irving, David. Nuremberg The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications. 1996. Pg. 50. Taken from the manuscript of Julius Streicher, June 16, 1945.

Butler, Rupert. Legions of Death: The Nazi Enslavement of Europe. Pen & Sword. London. 1983. Pg 238. The diary was subsequently used to incriminate and convict Frank for crimes against humanity.
Irving, David. Nuremberg The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications. 1996.

Churchill is well known for having said, “In wartime the truth is so precious that it must always be carefully guarded by a bodyguard of lies.” While investigating the accidental mustard gas release at Bari Italy in 1943, this author encountered much deception on the part of Churchill including orders that expressly forbid any mention of any form of “poison gas” present at Bari as well as orders from the former PM insisting that certain documents in British Archives be destroyed.
Reasons for this conclusion include the fact that Irving has a strong command of the German language as it was used during the Second World War, is recognized the world over for being able to read Goebbel’s unique and difficult to decipher handwriting, and possibly most importantly, has an unparalleled ability to access the memoirs of former German military and civilian leaders through their families because of his “sympathetic” views. It must be said here that Irving was found to be a “neo-Nazi,” and “distorter” of history in a libel trial he lost to an American historian and “Holocaust expert,” named Deborah Lipstadt in the 1990s.

Gilbert, G.M. Nuremberg Diary. Da Capo Press. 1995.
Raeder was sentenced to life in prison and Doenitz was given ten years. Both men were released from prison in the mid 1950s.

Irving, David. Nuremberg The Last Battle. Focal Point Publications. 1996. Pg 259.

This fact was ascertained through corresponding with an eighty-year old gentlemen by the name of Alfio Faro, currently living in Rome, who lived in Italy during the time Bari was attacked and the gas released. He was absolutely stunned to read about the incident in my history thesis. Faro, Alfio, in a letter to this author August 2004. It should be stated here that without the complicity of the Italian government this fact wouldn’t be possible.

Bacque, James. Other Losses. Stoddart. 1989 Pg 145-146.

Bacque, James. Other Losses. Stoddart. 1989 Pg 147-148.
Bacque, James. Other Losses. Stoddart. 1989 Pg 150.
Bacque, James. Other Losses. Stoddart. 1989. Pg 154.

Joseph Goebbels, Goebbels Diaries. Edited by Louis Lochner. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1948. Pg. 485.

AFP (French Press) article posted by the Turkish Press. Accessed on March 5, 2005. Sgrena herself later came out of the hospital accusing the United States government of intentionally trying to kill her in order to silence evidence provided by her implicating the US Military in war crimes. Whether true or not, the Italian public appears to believe her, and not the official US or Italian version, which may or may not have something to do with the current weakening of the Berlusconi regime – a government that is on the verge of collapse as of this writing.

Maynard, Curtis. A Study Focusing on the Formation of Opinion, and the Knowledge Associated with its Development. Psychology Thesis. Texas A&M Kingsville, 2002. Pg 38. Futrell, C. Fundamentals of Selling. Boston. Irwin-McGraw-Hill. 1999.

Maynard, Curtis. A Study Focusing on the Formation of Opinion, and the Knowledge Associated with its Development. Psychology Thesis. Texas A&M Kingsville, 2002. Pg 39. McConnel, R. C., & Brue, L. S. (1996). Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies 13th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Bacque, James. Other Losses. Stoddart. 1989 Pg 23.
Bacque, James. Other Losses. Stoddart. 1989 Pg 64.
This process was known as de-Nazification and included the publication of school textbooks free of Nazi propaganda but full of American propaganda.

Zimmerman, Jonathon, “Iraq’s Textbooks – and Ours.” Washington Post. June 13, 2003, Pg B07. Accessed on March 6, 2005.