I tested out a new one (duck.ai) by asking it if it would be safe to assume that whenever the US goes to war, they are blatantly lying about why.
The duck saith: oh god no, you can NEVER make those kinds of assumptions.
So, I responded politely:
Let me ask it a different way. Since 1945, has the US invaded any country without telling lies about why? Grenada, maybe? It seems like lying is closer to the norm than not.
Verbatim answer, copied and pasted:
Short answer: No—nearly every major US invasion or large-scale military intervention since 1945 involved official statements that later proved false, misleading, or selectively framed to justify intervention.
Brief examples (not exhaustive):
Korea (1950): Publicized as a purely defensive response to North Korean aggression; later accounts show significant U.S. and UN decisions and misperceptions influenced escalation.
Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin, 1964): Claims of unprovoked North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. ships were exaggerated/misrepresented and used to secure broad war powers.
Dominican Republic (1965): Intervention framed as protecting Americans and restoring order; critics say it overstates threat and downplays support for domestic political outcomes.
Laos/Cambodia (1960s–70s): Massive covert bombing and incursions were hidden or misrepresented to the public and Congress.
Grenada (1983): Official rationale emphasized rescuing U.S. nationals and restoring order; later analyses show concerns about regional influence and political alignment played a larger role, and the imminent-threat claim was disputed.
Panama (1989): Presented as necessary to protect U.S. lives and combat drug trafficking; regime-change and strategic motives were prominent and contested.
Iraq (2003): Key public claims (Iraq possessing WMDs, imminent threat, links to al-Qaeda) were false or unsupported.
Libya (2011): Initially justified as humanitarian protection of civilians; NATO’s role expanded to regime change, which some argue exceeded the UN mandate.
Syria (interventions, 2014 onward): Justifications (chemical-weapons red lines, ISIS threat, support for moderate rebels) involved selective or shifting claims.
Afghanistan (2001): Initial invasion followed 9/11 attacks; subsequent narratives about nation-building, counterinsurgency, and links between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda evolved and were contested.
Pattern: Governments commonly combine accurate, exaggerated, or false claims, selective intelligence, and framed narratives to build public and congressional support. There are interventions with mixed or ambiguous public messaging, but truly clear cases of invasion without any misleading or false claims are rare.
***
So … yeah. We’re not even counting the piled horsecrap about covert operations and regime change, like the 1953 engineered coup in Iran itself that installed the Shah as Supreme Sock Puppet with the West’s hand up his ass.
If their lips are moving, they’re doing their level best to smother us in shit.
Over and over again, for whole lifetimes, we shrug, send our young ones to die for the lies, get on with our ‘careers’ or whatever, and tell each other how important it is to vote.
If they only lied about the wars, that would be bad enough to damn the whole glorious greatest country, yeah?
It isn’t. They’re chock full of BS about pretty much everything else too.
“How then shall we live?”
I’m not sure I know any better than you do, sunshine, but down deep in my heart I am Certain of the Sooth that there must be a better way.