Government lies, when telling the truth would get respect from the world for it? -- The Minab School Attack, and more

Originally published in OpEd News.

On April 10, former Secretary of State, Democratic presidential nominee, and earlier the head of Vietnam Vets Against the War John Kerry told Jen Psaki on MSNBC, “When life and death is involved, and war is involved-- and it’s certainly a lesson I learned in the context of the 1960s-- you really need to tell the truth.”

The US has a long track record of lying to its people, and it is happening again in the Iran war.

On February 28, the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in the city of Minab, was struck by a US Tomahawk missile, killing over 175 people, including over 100 children.

When President Donald Trump was asked about these attacks and who did it, his response was, “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth adding “They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran” regarding their munitions.

Now, an investigation reveals that U.S. forces were targeting naval assets near the Strait of Hormuz, and they misfired because of old intel.

Along with this catastrophe, Pete Hegseth has also lied about the death of six soldiers in Kuwait calling the Iranian drone attack a “rare squirter”. This was once again another lie. A whistle blower, A US soldier involved in the attack, stated, “I want people to know the unit “ was unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position,” referring to the unit’s status during the incident.

These are not the first times the U.S. government has told the public one thing while the truth pointed in another direction.

In May 1960, a CIA pilot named Francis Gary Powers was shot down by the Soviet Union while flying over Sverdlovsk in a U-2 spy plane. NASA and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, claimed that he was flying a weather plane. Soviet Premier Khrushchev called him out on his lies.

In 1968, the Department of Defense tried to cover up another catastrophe during the Vietnam War, which was the My Lai Massacre, where over 400 Vietnamese civilians were killed by US soldiers. This war crime stayed unreported until journalist Seymour Hersh reported the truth.

During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B Johnson regularly misspoke about the US winning the war. Daniel Ellsberg’s release of The Pentagon Papers documented that four administrations had known the war was unwinnable. In 1964 Johnson said in a televised address, “We still seek no wider war,” but did the opposite. The war ended in 1975.

In 2004, at the war prison of Abu Ghraib many detainees were tortured, President George W. Bush publicly said it was the work of only a few soldiers.

Investigations later found that the abuse was systematically enforced by the DOD. 112 young, strappingly fit military detainees died in US custody at the hands of our soldiers, mysteriously with no autopsies.

In 2007, Blackwater contractors killed 14 and injured 17 unarmed Iraqi citizens. The US State Department released a preliminary fabricated report clearing the Blackwater guards of blame. It took the US Federal Court seven years to deliver a guilty verdict.

Why does the Pentagon need to first lie outright and then delay the truth as long as possible?

This is not incompetence. Organizations of this sophistication do not repeat the same mistake across seven decades by accident. It seems like it is a matter of DOD policy that slows the US ability to take corrective action and better our future. American values are better than this.

The Pentagon lies because it has learned it can. Every time the public absorbs the shock and moves on, the institution is taught that denial is costless.

Congress must open a full, independent, and public investigation into the Minab strike with reparations paid to the affected families.

According to Iran, the commander of the USS Spruance ordered the strike of the Minab school. The commander is a native of San Diego and has been completely wiped from the internet by the government. He should either come out and clear his name or instead of being a scapegoat become an American hero.

The Iranian press should not be the source reporting on this catastrophe to bring justice.

Robert Weiner is a former spokesman in the Clinton and Bush White Houses, and earlier for the House Government Operations Committee. He was senior aide to Congressmen John Conyers, Charles Rangel, Claude Pepper, Ed Koch, Senator Ted Kennedy, and Four-Star General/Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey.

Griffin Cobb is a Policy Analyst at Robert Weiner Associates and the Solutions for Change Foundation.

Link to original article: Government lies, when telling the truth would get respect from the world for it? -- The Minab School Attack, and more