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HOME • Chronology of Terror 1 2 3 • Bibliographies • Valuable Websites • About This Site • SITE MAP
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“Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished — only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina...”

— William Shirer
author, 1973

Page 2
Chronology of
American State Terrorism

U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study #23, 1948:

“Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity [U.S. military-economic supremacy]... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

— George Kennan
Director of Policy Planning
U.S. State Department
1948

The following collection of relatively brief entries is divided into three pages. Each page has the full list near the top so you can jump around from entry to entry between pages.

This list of nations represents literally millions of human beings all over the world who have been brutally murdered — directly by the United States military/government or by its obedient proxies. Huge though the list is, there is yet more to add. But it does at least contain most of the known campaigns of American state terrorism, genocide and subversion — all of which are in the historical record for the whole world to see. God only knows what evil the U.S. government and military have committed that remains hidden.

And as long as the United States remains a military power, the list of state terror victims will keep growing.

Page One: Iraq 2003 Palestine 1948-Present Iraq 1991-2003 Afghanistan 2001-Present Colombia 1960s-Present Yugoslavia 1992-Present Congo/Zaire 1961-Present Cuba 1959-Present Guatemala 1953-Present El Salvador 1980-Present East Timor 1975-1999 Haiti 1987-1994 Somalia 1993 Afghanistan 1979-1992 Nicaragua 1981-1990 Panama 1989

Page Two: Libya 1981-1989 Iran 1988 Grenada 1979-1984 Greece 1964-1974 Chile 1964-1973 Costa Rica Mid-1950s, 1970-71 Dominican Republic 1963-1966 Vietnam 1945-1974 Cambodia 1955-1973 Laos 1957-1973 Thailand 1965-1973 Italy 1947-1970s Indonesia 1965 Brazil 1961-1964 British Guiana/Guyana 1953-1964 Iraq 1963

Page Three: Soviet Union 1940s-1960s Western Europe 1950s-1960s Haiti 1959 Indonesia 1957-1958 Middle East 1956-1958 Iran 1953 Germany, Italy, Europe 1950s Eastern Europe 1948-1956 Albania 1949-1953 Korea 1945-1953 Philippines 1945-1953 Greece 1947-1949 Marshall Islands 1946-1958 Italy 1947-1948 France 1947 China 1945-1951 Hiroshima & Nagasaki August 1945 Dresden, Germany February 1945 Japan, Germany, France 1942-1945 Around the world 1800s-1930s Philippines 1899-1902 America and Africa 1607-1890

1981 – 1989
American Terror-Campaign Against the Libyan People;
Numerous CIA Assassination Attempts on Muammar Qadhafi

Estimated civilian deaths from the April 1986 attack: over 100 people, including Qadhafi’s two-year-old daughter

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

The official reason for the Reagan administration’s intense antipathy toward Moammar Qaddafi was that he supported terrorism. In actuality, the Libyan leader’s crime was not his support for terrorist groups per se, but that he was supporting the wrong terrorist groups; i.e., Qaddafi was not supporting the same terrorists that Reagan was, such as the Nicaraguan Contras, UNITA in Angola, Cuban exiles in Miami, the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala and the U.S. military in Grenada. The one band of terrorists the two men supported in common was the Moujahedeen in Afghanistan.

On top of this, Washington has a deep-seated antipathy toward Middle east oil-producing countries that it can’t exert proper control over. Qaddafi was uppity, and he had overthrown a rich ruling clique and instituted a welfare state. He and his country would have to be put in their place. Five years later, the United States bombed one of Qaddafi’s residences, killing scores of people. There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to overthrow him, economic sanctions, and a major disinformation campaign reporting one piece of nonsense after another, including conspicuous exaggerations of his support for terrorism, and shifting the blame for the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103 to Libya and away from Iran and Syria when the Gulf War campaign required the support of the latter two countries.

To Washington, Libya was like magnetic north: the finger always pointed there.

(End of Rogue State excerpt)

On April 15, 1986, 19 warplanes of the U.S. Air Force took off from their bases in Great Britain and flew to Libya, whereupon the heroic F111 pilots bombed the private house of Muammar Qadhafi and violently murdered his little two-year-old daughter.

At least 100 other people — including civilian men, women and children — were slaughtered as the U.S. Air Force pilots bombed private homes and mosques all over Tripoli and Benghazi.

They actually managed to hit a military target too, the Al-Azizia barracks, which was Qadhafi’s headquarters. On April 16 the American pilots who perpetrated these war crimes openly admitted that the purpose of the attack had been to assassinate Qadhafi.

For years prior to this outrage the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government had been trying to murder the popular Libyan leader. Navy jets from the U.S. Sixth Fleet had repeatedly violated Libyan airspace while Navy ships violated Libyan territorial waters in bullying attempts to provoke a reaction.

The U.S. Navy shot down Libyan planes over Libyan territory, and sank Libyan Coast Guard boats in Libyan territorial waters. Here are some of the highlights of this American terror campaign:

• In the summer of 1980 the CIA attempted to shoot down the plane of Qadhafi as he was on a flight to Eastern Europe. An Italian plane flying over Ostika was mistakenly shot down instead.

• July 27, 1981 — Newsweek published an article reporting that CIA Director William Casey had authorized extensive plans to assassinate Qadhafi and overthrow the popular democratic government of Libya. This classic American M.O. included a media propaganda campaign and numerous “psy-ops”, or psychological warfare operations, aimed at creating turmoil within Libya.

• August 19, 1981 — Eight American jet fighters attacked two Libyan air force reconnaissance planes over Libyan territory in the Gulf of Sirte, shooting them down.

• 1985 — The CIA recruited mercenaries to be trained for several attempts to assassinate Qadhafi. One of the plans called for sprinkling a special poison into his food that would weaken his immune system, causing a gradual death with symptoms that would not be immediately recognized.

• March 25, 1986 — U.S. Navy warplanes from the Sixth Fleet bombed Libyan civilian targets in the Gulf of Sirte. They attacked a Libyan Coast Guard boat, murdering the crew of 10 men. The Navy jets also attacked a larger Libyan Coast Guard ship. 42 men of the crew escaped into the water and attempted to swim to shore. The U.S. Navy pilots slaughtered them all in the water.

• April 4, 1986 — While on a victory tour of the aircraft carrier “Enterprise”, stationed off the coast of Oman, Vice President George Bush characterized the U.S. Sixth Fleet’s terror campaign against innocent Libyan people as “a tough lesson for Qadhafi” which had given him a “nosebleed”. The brainwashed morons of the crew cheered.

Eleven days later, over 100 innocent people lay dead in the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi — including a little two-year-old girl. Murdered by these American heros.

See also:

The Continuing Terror Against Libya

Why America Hates Qadhafi

Libya, Qadhafi and the Green Revolution

Information on the present-day situation in Libya can be found on Mathaba.net at http://www.mathaba.net/

[Back to list]

1988
U.S. Navy Mass-Murder of Civilian Iranian Airline Passengers

Known civilian deaths: 290 people

From the WSWS article:
“Pan Am Flight 103: Trial opens of Libyans accused of Lockerbie bombing”
By Steve James
6 May 2000
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/lock-m06.shtml

On July 3, 1988 the U.S. Navy warship the Vincennes was operating within Iranian waters, providing military support for Iraq in the ongoing Iran/Iraq war. During a one-sided battle against a small number of lightly armed Iranian gunboats, the Vincennes fired two missiles at an [Iranian] Airbus, which was on a routine civilian flight. All 290 civilians onboard were killed.

This act of mass murder by the U.S. has never resulted in any court case. The captain and crew of the Vincennes were militarily decorated. Attempts by relatives of the victims to bring legal action against the American government were rejected by the US Supreme Court in 1993. Despite the fact that the vast majority of victims were Iranian, the US paid $2.9 million in compensation only to non-Iranian victims of the shooting.

“I will never apologize for the United States of America — I don’t care what the facts are.”

— President George Bush, Sr.
referring to the mass-murder
of Iranian civilian people
by the U.S.S. Vincennes

[Back to list]

1979 – 1984
American Subversion and Invasion of tiny Grenada

Estimated civilian deaths: several hundred people

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

How impoverished, small, weak or far away must a country be before it is not a threat to the U.S. government? In a 1979 coup, Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in this island country of 110 thousand, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro’s, Washington was again driven by its fear of “another Cuba,” particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm.

Reagan administration destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon after the coup, featuring outrageous disinformation and deception. Finally came the invasion in October 1983, which put into power individuals more beholden to U.S. foreign policy objectives. The U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers. The invasion was attended by yet more transparent lies, created by Washington to justify its gross violations of international law.

(Added note: This invasion was not attended, however, by newsreporters. The 1983 invasion of Grenada was the first major American military assault in which newsreporters were barred from being present. The U.S. government didn’t want the world to witness the great superpower beating up on a tiny island and murdering its civilian inhabitants.)

From What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky:

No country is exempt from this treatment [i.e. American state terrorism], no matter how unimportant. In fact, it’s the weakest, poorest countries that often arouse the greatest hysteria.

Grenada has a hundred thousand people who produce a little nutmeg, and you could hardly find it on a map. But when Grenada began to undergo a mild social revolution, Washington quickly moved to destroy the threat.

There’s a reason for that. The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, “why not us?”

From Killing Hope
by William Blum:

At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada’s new U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and were eroding civil rights.

In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called “an increasingly authoritarian style.”

[Back to list]

1964 – 1974
American-backed Subversion, Mass-Murder, Torture and Overthrow of Democracy in Greece

Estimated civilian deaths: over 10,000 people

From Killing Hope
by William Blum:

The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece.

The 1967 coup was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a “Communist takeover.” Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory.

It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that “a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand” the number of people tortured, usually in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States.

Becket reported the following: Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance:

“You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can’t fight us, we are Americans.”

George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-Communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.

[Back to list]

1964 – 1973
American-backed Overthrow of the Democratic Government of Chile

Estimated civilian deaths: over 5000 people from the subsequent Pinochet terror campaign; at least 1000 people missing and presumed dead

From Killing Hope
by William Blum:

[Democratic Marxist President] Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist, [who] could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power — an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists" can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.

After sabotaging Allende’s electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.

They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown into bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that “In Chile women wear dresses!”; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check-books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared.
(End of Killing Hope excerpt)

In the bloody coup of September 11, 1973, Henry Kissinger and the CIA helped General Augusto Pinochet overthrow the democratically-elected leftist government of President Salvador Allende. The Fascist puppet-regime of Augusto Pinochet then embarked on a 17-year terror campaign against the people of Chile, which included mass arrests and executions, death squads, torture and disappearances. Many of the victims were fingered as “radicals” by lists provided by the CIA.

Santiago’s national stadium was used as a mass execution site. Robert Saldias, the first army officer to come forward publicly without concealing his identity, said prisoners entering the stadium were identified by yellow, black, and red discs. “Whoever received a red disc had no chance,” Saldias said.

Many of the professional torturers and assassins in the Chilean military (and in every other Fascist country of Central and South America) were trained at the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Under Pinochet, Chile also participated in “Operation Condor,” a joint collaboration between the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil to hunt down and murder exiled opponents of those regimes. Successful hits included the 1976 car-bomb explosion in Washington D.C., which killed Allende’s exiled foreign minister Orlando Letelier, and his aide, American Ronnie Moffitt.

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.”

— Henry Kissinger
1970
referring to Chilean voters

See also:

Remember Chile: General Pinochet and human rights abuses
http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/

[Back to list]

Mid-1950s, 1970-71
American Assassination Attempts on the Elected Leader of Costa Rica

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

To liberal American political leaders, President Jose Figueres was the quintessential “liberal democrat”, the kind of statesman they liked to think, and liked the world to think, was the natural partner of US foreign policy rather than the military dictators who somehow kept popping up as allies.

Yet the United States tried to overthrow Figueres (in the 1950s, and perhaps also in the 1970s, when he was again president), and tried to assassinate him twice. The reasons? Figueres was not tough enough on the left, led Costa Rica to become the first country in Central America to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and on occasion questioned American foreign policy, like the Bay of Pigs invasion.

[Back to list]

1963 – 1966
American Subversion and Tyranny in the Dominican Republic

From Killing Hope
by William Blum:

In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy’s liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch’s government was to be the long sought “showcase of democracy” that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.

Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.

A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their discomfort with Bosch’s plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that “creeping socialism” is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.

In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing.

Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.

[Back to list]

1945 – 1974
American Genocide of the Vietnamese People

Estimated total civilian deaths: 2,500,000 – 3,500,000 people

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

The slippery slope began with the US siding with the French, the former colonizers, and with collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers, who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American.

Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of “communist” (one of those bad-for-you label warnings).

He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America’s help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. For he was some kind of communist.

Ho Chi Minh modeled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with...” But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of communist.

More than twenty years and more than a million dead later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people believe that the US lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, by poisoning the earth, the water and the gene pool for generations, Washington had in fact achieved its primary purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.

See also:

American Genocide of the Vietnamese People

The My Lai Massacre

The Phoenix Program

The Phoenix Program, My Lai and the “Tiger Cages”

American Patriots and the Napalm Attack on the People of Trang Bang

[Back to list]

1955 – 1973
American Genocide of the Cambodian People

Estimated total civilian deaths: 1,000,000 – 2,000,000 people

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an American client. After many years of hostility toward his regime, including assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret “carpet bombings” of 1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was all that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the fray. Five years later, they took power. But the years of American bombing had caused Cambodia’s traditional economy to vanish. The old Cambodia had been destroyed forever.

Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery upon this unhappy land. And to multiply the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.

See also:

American Genocide of the Cambodian People, 1969-1973

[Back to list]

1957 – 1973
American Genocide of the Laotian People

Estimated total civilian deaths: over 500,000 people

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

The Laotian left, led by the Pathet Lao, tried to effect social change peacefully, making significant electoral gains and taking part in coalition governments. But the United States would have none of that.

The CIA and the State Department, through force, bribery and other pressures, engineered coups in 1958, 1959 and 1960. Eventually, the only option left for the Pathet Lao was armed force.

The CIA created its famous “Arme Clandestine” — totaling 30,000, from every corner of Asia — to do battle, while the US Air Force, between 1965 and 1973, rained down more than two million tons of bombs upon the people of Laos, many of whom were forced to live in caves for years in a desperate attempt to escape the monsters falling from the sky.

After hundreds of thousands had been killed, many more maimed, and countless bombed villages with hardly stone standing upon stone, the Pathet Lao took control of the country, following on the heels of events in Vietnam.

See also:

American Genocide of the Laotian People, 1965-1973

[Back to list]

1965 – 1973
American Tyranny and Terrorization of the People of Thailand

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

While using the country to facilitate its daily bombings of Vietnam and Laos, the US military took the time to try to suppress insurgents who were fighting for economic reform, an end to police repression and in opposition to the mammoth US military presence, with its huge airbases, piers, barracks, road building and other major projects, which appeared to be taking the country apart and taking it over.

Eventually, the American military personnel count in Thailand reached 40,000, with those engaged in the civil conflict — including 365 Green Beret forces — officially designated as “advisers”, as they were in Vietnam.

To fight the guerillas, the US financed, armed, equipped and trained police and military units in counter-insurgency, significantly increasing their numbers; transported government forces by helicopter to combat areas; were present in the field as well, as battalion advisers and sometimes accompanied Thai soldiers on anti-guerrilla sweeps.

In addition, the Americans instituted considerable propaganda and psychological warfare activities, and actually encouraged the Thai government to adopt a more forceful response. However, the conflict in Thailand, and the US role, never approached the dimensions of Vietnam.

In 1966, the Washington Post reported that “In the view of some observers, continued dictatorship in Thailand suits the United States, since it assures a continuation of American bases in the country and that, as a US official put it bluntly, ‘is our real interest in this place.’”

[Back to list]

1947 – 1970s
American Perversion of Democracy in Italy

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

In 1947, the US forced the Italian government to dismiss its Communist and Socialist cabinet members in order to receive American economic aid. The following year and for decades thereafter, each time a combined front of the Communists and Socialists, or the Communists alone, threatened to defeat the US-supported Christian Democrats in national elections, the CIA used every (dirty) trick in the book and trained its big economic, political and psychological-warfare guns on the Italian people, while covertly funding the CD candidates.

And it worked. Again and again. This perversion of democracy was done in the name of “saving democracy” in Italy.

American corporations also contributed many millions of dollars to help keep the left from a share of power.

[Back to list]

1965
American-backed Genocide of the Indonesian People

Estimated civilian deaths: 500,000 – 1,000,000 people

From Killing Hope
by William Blum:

A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his replacement by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that began immediately — of Communists, Communist sympathizers, suspected Communists, suspected Communist sympathizers, and none of the above — was called by the New York Times “one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history.” The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a million and go above a million.

It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of “Communist” operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured.

“It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands,” said one U.S. diplomat. “But that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”

Added note: To this day, Indonesia’s military and police forces continue to be one of America’s best customers for weapons, training, and torture devices.

[Back to list]

1961 – 1964
American-backed State Terrorism and Overthrow of Democracy in Brazil

From Killing Hope
by William Blum:

President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing “communists” to hold positions in government agencies.

Yet the man was no radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official Washington line was...yes, it’s unfortunate that democracy has been overthrown in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from communism.

For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that Latin America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for “political crimes” was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, peasants’ homes were burned down, priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the “moral rehabilitation” of Brazil.

Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became one of the United States’ most reliable allies in Latin America.

[Back to list]

1953 – 1964
American/British Overthrow of the Democratically-Elected President of Guyana

From Killing Hope
by William Blum:

For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who tried to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a leftist-more so than Sukarno or Arbenz — his policies in office were not revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented Washington’s greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics — from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the U. S. and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964. John F. Kennedy had given a direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower.

One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the 1980s, was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.

[Back to list]

1963
American/British Assassination of the Leader of Iraq

From Rogue State
by William Blum:

In July 1958, Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem overthrew the monarchy and established a republic. Though somewhat of a reformist, he was by no means any kind of radical. His action, however, awakened revolutionary fervor in the masses and increased the influence of the Iraqi Communist Party.

By April of the following year, CIA Director Allen Dulles, with his customary hyperbole, was telling Congress that the Iraqi Communists were close to a “complete takeover” and the situation in that country was “the most dangerous in the world today.” In actuality, Kassem aimed at being a neutralist in the Cold War and pursued rather inconsistent policies toward the Iraqi Communists, never allowing them formal representation in his cabinet, nor even full legality, though they strongly desired both. He tried to maintain power by playing the Communists off against other ideological groups.

A secret plan for a joint US-Turkish invasion of the country was drafted by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the 1958 coup. Reportedly, only Soviet threats to intercede on Iraq’s side forced Washington to hold back. But in 1960, the United States began to fund the Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq who were fighting for a measure of autonomy and the CIA undertook an assassination attempt against Kassem, which was unsuccessful.

The Iraqi leader made himself even more of a marked man when, in that same year, he began to help create the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which challenged the stranglehold Western oil companies had on the marketing of Arab oil; and in 1962 he created a national oil company to exploit the nation’s oil.

In February 1963, Kassem told the French daily, Le Monde, that he had received a note from Washington — “in terms scarcely veiled, calling upon me to change my attitude, under threat of sanctions against Iraq... All our trouble with the imperialists [the US and the UK] began the day we claimed our legitimate rights to Kuwait.” (Kuwait was a key element in US and UK hegemonic designs over mid-east oil.)

A few days after Kassem’s remarks were published, he was overthrown in a coup and summarily executed; thousands of communists were killed.

The State Department soon informed the press that it was pleased that the new regime would respect international agreements and was not interested in nationalizing the giant Iraq Petroleum Co., of which the US was a major owner. The new government, at least for the time being, also cooled its claim to Kuwait.

Papers of the British cabinet of 1963, later declassified, disclose that the coup had been backed by the British and the CIA.

[Back to list]

Chronology of Terror, page 1

Chronology of Terror, page 3

See also:

Neighborhood Bully: American Militarism
interview with Ramsey Clark

The Geopolitical Strategy of Imperial America

America’s Bloody History: A Summary of Places and Dates
(This page features a 1.3 MB animated graphic)

Related sites

Information War
http://www.informationwar.org/

“For peace, freedom and plenty for all...”

A valuable site with a wealth of information, including:

• State Terrorism
• U.S. Sponsored Terrorism
• Terrorist Networks
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Let the Bloody Truth Be Told:
A Chronology of U.S. Imperialism
http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm

A partial list of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 2001, compiled by Zoltan Grossman. This page also has a list of links to more information on genocidal U.S. imperialism.

U.S. Foreign Policy and Empire:
A Selected Bibliography (1995)
compiled by Will Miller
Department of Philosophy, University of Vermont
http://www.neravt.com/left/miller.htm

A Century of U.S. Military Interventions
From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan
Compiled by Zoltan Grossman
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm

“U.S. military spending ($343 billion in the year 2000) is 69 percent greater than that of the next five highest nations combined.”

Bibliography

Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum

Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky

The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman

Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others

The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark

Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League

The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky

Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
by Noam Chomsky
Pressure Drop Press, 1991

The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine

Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti

The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee

To Kill A Nation:
The Attack on Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti

Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving

What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky

Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan

Against Empire
by Michael Parenti

The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti

Hidden Agenda:
U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia
by Ramsey Clark, Nadja Tesich, Michel Chossudovsky, Slobodan Milosevic, numerous authors

NATO in the Balkans:
Voices of Opposition
by Ramsey Clark, Sean Gervasi, Sara Flounders, Thomas Deichmann, Gary Wilson, Richard Becker and Nadja Tesich

Colombia:
The Genocidal Democracy
by Javier Giraldo

The Continuing Terror Against Libya
by Fan Yew Teng

A People’s History of the United States:
1492 — Present
by Howard Zinn

Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James Loewen

Saving Private Power:
The Hidden History of “The Good War”
by Michael Zezima

Counterrevoution: U.S. Foreign Policy
by E. & R. Boorstein
New York, 1990

Deterring Democracy
by Noam Chomsky
New York, 1992

Year 501: The Conquest Continues
by Noam Chomsky
Boston, 1993

Confronting the Third World:
U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-1980
by Gabriel Kolko
New York, 1988

Imperialism:
From the Colonial Age to the Present
by Harry Magdoff
New York, 1978

Culture and Imperialism
by Edward Said
New York, 1993

Imperial Brain Trust:
The Council on Foreign Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy
by Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter
New York, 1977

Trilateralism:
The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management
by Holly Sklar
Boston, 1980

The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb
by Gar Alperovitz

Bloody Hell:
The Price Soldiers Pay
by Daniel Hallock

Deadly Deceits:
My 25 years in the CIA
by Ralph W. McGehee

The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News
by Norman Solomon

Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti

Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

“If you want free speech you can go down to a street corner and shout.”

— Jim Olson
owner of Humboldt Internet
September 26, 2001

On September 14, 2001, three days after the WTC attack, the owner of the humboldt1.com ISP summarily deleted the original American Terrorism website. When informed that he was suppressing online free speech, he offered the helpful advice above.

http://www.humboldt1.com/~016910/Amerikan_Terrorism.html
Launched: May, 2000  —  Torpedoed: September 14, 2001   R.I.P.

To spare my vocal chords I offer this remaining mirror site:

http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/

http://www.AmericanStateTerrorism.com/ (Germany)
AWOL: October 24, 2003 – no response to email inquiries

http://americanterrorism.afedwards.com/ (U.K.)
Missing In Action: May 27, 2002
entire afedwards.com site vanished, email inquiries bounced back

http://www.angelfire.com/dc/americanterrorism/
Axed by Angelfire.com: December 13, 2001 (see note below)

http://americanterrorism.tripod.com/
Torpedoed by Tripod.com: October 18, 2001 (see note below)