Introduction
A splendid proposal was made to me by my publisher to combine the four brochures which appeared between 09-11-2001 and 01-01-2003 into one. The purpose of having written these was to present an antidote to the forceful American-British propaganda machine, which is carried by the only global tv networks: cnn and bbc world, the channels of the current warmongers.
I arrived in New York in 1948 to study at Yale, when Hary Truman was president. It was the year that nato was founded to protect the West form the ussr. We were told that ‘the Russians were coming’. This intentionally whipped up international fear of the Soviet Union beautifully played into the hands of the military industrial complex. The United States became what Hitler Germany had done before, one gargantuan war industry. As former British minister of Defense, Lord Chalfont, once told me: ‘You cannot continue to produce weapons without sooner or later using them’. That was Hitler's problem. War had to bring salvation. Likewise, the us military machine needs armed conflicts in order to justify its existence.
So, since my residency in New York from 1958-1992, I have been an eyewitness to the rule of all us presidents since World War II. Some as a journalist I have met in person, but I have followed all of them for 55 years. It is critically necessary to know the history, if one wants to have an opinion of events of the day. Let alone if we are being asked as citizens of so-called free and democratic nations to cast our votes. In this volume, I have tried to present relevant information as background tot today's events, most of it which conveniently forgotten and never mentioned again.
Willem Oltmans, Amsterdam, 10 February 2003.
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