Posted by pancho from pool0190.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.190) on Tuesday, December 03, 2002 at 2:46PM :
When Johnson told his lie about an attack against a US warship off the coast of Vietnam back before 58,000 "dear" Americans and three million Vietnamese "enemies", who never did a thing to us either, got killed...if I had said I thought it was a lie...though I couldn't prove it...well...
They would have had me on talk shows as an example of a conspiracy nut...an un-American...a traitor....a dreamer of dreams...a liar and a scoundrel...all the things Johnson turned out to be in that matter...and Nixon and Kissinger after him.
If I'd said US policy in other countries plus books and papers and conversation and THOUGHT, that things tended in that direction, the direction of a deliberate lie more than they did towards the official version... that we couldn't hope to know more back then...back before the Freedom of Information Act...another protection we just gave away willingly....newscasters, teachers, officials and the citizens would have scoffed and said..."where's the proof". If they'd heard of me at all, except as an example of a drug addled Yoot who'd lost his mind.
Proof is good...but good sense can be better. It can fail you certainly...but there's a much greater likelihood that the things you'll be told will be half-lies and whole ones...if you're told anything at all.
"proof" is valid...if you have a serious chance of finding out any facts to base it on. Absent the proof, or in the presence of deliberate lies...you better start sharpening your wits before they get creamed for good.
-- pancho
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