U.S. Air Force bombers heading for North Vietnam in 1965, a year after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution widened the war. (Photo: USAF)
When the public learned that President Eisenhower had lied about the events surrounding U2 flights over Russia, he told his secretary that he needed to resign.
He took lying personally. Maybe it came from his days at West Point. President Lyndon Johnson was very different.
In the summer of 1964, two American naval destroyers cruising the Gulf of Tomkin off of Vietnam’s shores radioed they had been fired at by North Vietnamese patrol boats. Johnson used that event to ask Congress to increase the US military presence in Vietnam, leading to a massive buildup of American forces.
Johnson either strongly exaggerated these events, or they never occurred.
An internal NSA historical document released in 2005 and declassified in 2007 concluded that signals intelligence information was presented in a manner to support the claims of an attack while contrary evidence suggested no attacks had occurred was withheld by Johnson’s administration from Congress and the public.
America then spent years in Vietnam and lost over 50,000 troops killed and many more maimed. The cost to the American psyche is immeasurable.
No one can say for sure that George W. Bush himself lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, but numerous reports say that his administration lied hundreds of times about the justification for his invasion. Remember his vice president Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deceptive testimony before Congress? Ugh.
Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) were his primary reason for attacking Iraq, but U.S. troops found none and subsequent investigations and commissions found there was never any evidence that Iraq had stockpiled WMDs.
More than 50 children were killed in a missle strike on this Iranian school during the U.S./Israeli attack. The source of the missile is disputed. (Photo: Tasnim News Agency)
Bush’s Office of Special Plans was instrumental in promoting a false scenario that favored the invasion, and ignored contradictory information produced by the CIA.
The Bush administration also created a public perception that there was a link between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks. However, there was no factual basis for these assertions, and they, too, were contradicted by the CIA.
Critics of the Bush Administration contended that it carefully orchestrated a series of lies and misrepresentations to justify going to war in Iraq.
In 2004, a House report identified no fewer than 237 misleading statements made by his administration. And according to the CIA, no weapons of mass destruction where ever found.
As a direct result of these lies, he created a perception that an invasion was necessary, and the United States has had a troop presence in Iraq ever since the March 2003 invasion. More than 4,500 U.S. service members have died, while over 32,000 have been wounded in action as a result.
And of course, there were the lies told by President Richard Nixon regarding the invasion of Cambodia.
All people lie, and that includes presidents. Presidents may lie for matters of national security. Trump, however, has told 10s of thousands of lies while in office. His lies are serious and egregious.
When he lies about a subject, political power and not rational discourse becomes the factor for determining whether he is lying or telling the truth.
He lied about his reasons for unseating Venzuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. He claimed it was about drugs, and it was clear that it was about oil. He simply cannot tell the truth.
And, Trump always attacks a challenger’s motives when he is confronted with a lie. Its as if the truth hardly ever escapes his lips. Never.
He has called the media “the fake news media” and “the enemy of the people.’’ He constantly lies about facts and almost nothing he says is believable. The same is true for his administrations spokespeople.
Here we are, at war with Iran, on Trump‘s sole doing and say so without the benefit of congressional oversight or even public support. On his word.
His claim to justify war is that Iran, he says, will not give up it’s nuclear program, the one he claims to have obliterated completely with his June 2025 airstrikes, and that Iran will soon develop missiles that can reach the United States.
According to a 2025 Defense Intelligence Agency report, Iran is a decade or more away from having any such missiles.
And, the Omani mediator between the U.S. and Iran negotiating a new nuclear arms deal, said in his most recent comments on Thursday, that progress had been made in the discussions. Yet the attack happened anyway.
With a president that does not know a lie from the truth, we simply are unable to assess whether it made any sense or good sense or no sense to go to war with Iran.
He controls the narrative, the troops, and Congress is absent from any participation in the decision-making as is the public.
Watch President Trump’s statement below.
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