Lying for Empire: How to Commit War Crimes With a Straight Face [Paperback]

David Model (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2005

Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, G. H. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush. No president has been publicly tried for committing a war crime. Yet these presidents have committed them while invoking threats of Communism, terrorism and the loss of American lives.

To win popular support for these foreign adventures, these presidents have lied to the American people, resulting in the loss of millions of innocent lives as in Vietnam or Iraq. These actions clearly violated international law and constituted war crimes.

David Model is a professor of political science and economics at Seneca College in Toronto. He has previously written People Before Profits: Reversing the Corporate Agenda and Corporate Rule: Understanding and Challenging the New World Order.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Model is a professor of political science and economics at Seneca College in Toronto. He has previously written People Before Profits: Reversing the Corportae Agenda and Corporate Rule: Understanding and Challening the New World Order.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Common Courage Press (August 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567513204
• ISBN-13: 978-1567513202
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,743,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nothing too new., July 25, 2006

By 

S. ODonoghue (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lying for Empire: How to Commit War Crimes With a Straight Face (Paperback)

Ok, the # of stars this book should get is conditional upon how much you have already looked into U.S. foreign policy. If you are just getting into this sort of stuff, then I would give this book 4 stars. However, if you have already read most of the standard texts (Herman, Blum, Chomsky, etc.) then you will basically be getting recycled versions of that. In fact a huge portion of the book is in text quotations from such authors.

Now, the book puts forth a dual thesis. Model sets out to prove that all the U.S. presidents covered willfully committed war-crimes, crimes against humanity and/or other breaches of international law. In regards to this, Model saves the end of each chapter to show exactly which International Laws, treaties, etc. were violated, as well as documenting the specific lies told by the administrations. These sections are done very well, giving you the exact wording of the International Agreements.

The other claim Model makes is that these actions were perpetrated with the intent of expanding the American Empire. Well, he basically forgets about this for most of the book. He will usually pay lip-service to this a few times per chapters, but he never actually delves into this.

In conclusion, this book is good if it is serving as your introduction to such matters, providing good historical context and quotations of seminal works on the subject. However, you might feel a bit cheated if you are well-read in this genre because of the lack of new revilations and the amount of recycled material.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great, March 9, 2010

By 

M. Goodpaster "infoninja" (Virginia) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lying for Empire: How to Commit War Crimes With a Straight Face (Paperback)

Everything was great. The author seems a little biased towards liberal thinking but deals equally with LBJ, Truman, and Slick Willy and the so-called conservatives. This book can go a long way to exposing the single party system that we really have in this country. The false left/right paradigm that our media constantly reinforces is one of the biggest weapons of the global elite. A worthwhile read. \\\9/11 was an inside job/// [...]