6 Times the U.S. Government Lied to Start (or Escalate) a War
As another war (with Iran) begins based on disputed intelligence, let's explore how America has a long history of selling conflicts through lies
Before you read:
Remember, I’m going live with a Nobel Peace Prize Winner to discuss the potential war with Iran. Don’t miss it, this Thursday at 10am ET.
Two days ago, President Donald Trump launched airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, claiming Tehran was "within a few months" of developing nuclear weapons. Today, Iran responded with attacks against the US.
Sound familiar? It should. Trump's justification for bombing Iran echoes decades of manipulated intelligence and exaggerated threats that have repeatedly dragged America into unnecessary wars.
Despite U.S. intelligence agencies stating as recently as March 2025 that Iran was "not building a nuclear weapon," Trump followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's warnings of Iran’s imminent nuclear threat. The pattern is depressingly predictable. Manufacture or exaggerate a threat, whip up public fear, then launch missiles before anyone can fact-check the claims.
This latest deception follows a long American tradition of using lies to justify war. From phantom attacks to nonexistent weapons, the U.S. government has repeatedly misled its citizens about the reasons for military action. Here are six key moments where government lies became the foundation for war, revealing how propaganda and manufactured consent have shaped American foreign policy for nearly two centuries.
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1. The Thornton Affair and the Mexican-American War (1846)
President James K. Polk was determined to seize California and vast Mexican territories, but he needed a justification for war. When Mexican forces ambushed Captain Seth Thornton's scouting party in April 1846, Polk found his pretext. The president declared to Congress that Mexico had "invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil," demanding a declaration of war.
But Thornton's men were in the disputed Nueces Strip, a region both nations claimed and that was not undisputed American territory. Mexican General Mariano Arista argued that the Americans were in Mexican territory when attacked. The ambush occurred at Rancho de Carricitos, in an area that had never been under effective U.S. control.
Congressman Abraham Lincoln wasn't buying it and introduced his famous "Spot Resolution," demanding Polk identify the exact spot where American blood was shed and prove it was actually American territory. Lincoln's challenge exposed the fundamental lie underlying Polk's war justification, but by then it was too late. Congress had already voted for war, and American forces were seizing Mexican lands from Texas to California. The conflict that followed would add over a million square miles to the United States, all based on a deliberately misleading claim about where a border conflict occurred.
2. The USS Maine and the Spanish-American War (1898)
On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 260 American sailors. Within hours, the U.S. government and sensationalist newspapers were blaming Spain for the disaster. "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!" became the rallying cry that pushed America into the Spanish-American War just two months later.
However, Spain almost certainly had nothing to do with it. A U.S. naval investigation claimed an external explosion, presumably a Spanish mine, had triggered the ship's ammunition stores. But Spain offered to submit the question to international arbitration, and no evidence ever connected Spanish forces to the blast. Later investigations suggested the explosion was likely accidental, possibly caused by a coal fire that ignited the ammunition magazine.
Yellow journalism played a crucial role in manufacturing war fever. Publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer sensationalized the incident, feeding Americans a steady diet of anti-Spanish propaganda. The newspapers portrayed the explosion as a deliberate act of war, even though investigators had no proof. The emotional power of "Remember the Maine" overwhelmed rational analysis of what actually happened. The resulting war gave the United States control of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, while Spain lost its remaining colonial empire, all because America chose to blame a foreign nation for what was likely a tragic accident.
3. Operation Northwoods and the Cuban Conspiracy (1962)
Sometimes the lies are revealed before they can cause damage. Operation Northwoods stands as one of the most chilling examples of how far the U.S. government was willing to go to manufacture a justification for war, even if it meant killing American citizens.
This 1962 Pentagon plan, designed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Operation Mongoose, proposed a series of false flag operations to justify an invasion of Cuba. The scheme included hijacking American planes, bombing U.S. cities, sinking American ships, and staging terrorist attacks that would be blamed on Fidel Castro's government. One proposal suggested creating "lists of casualties" from fake attacks, complete with fabricated names and ages to make the deception more believable.
The plan called for using "friendly Cubans" to stage attacks on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, developing a "terror campaign" in Miami and Washington D.C., and even suggested blowing up John Glenn's rocket launch and blaming Cuba if it failed. The document noted that such operations would provide "adequate justification for U.S. military intervention in Cuba."
President John F. Kennedy rejected the proposal, but the plan remained classified for decades. When finally revealed in the 1990s, Operation Northwoods proved that the highest levels of the U.S. military were prepared to murder American civilians to create a pretext for war. That such a plan was seriously considered reveals the lengths to which the national security establishment would go to achieve its geopolitical objectives.
4. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the Vietnam War (1964)
On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly attacked the USS Maddox in international waters. Two days later, the Johnson administration claimed a second, more serious attack occurred against both the Maddox and USS Turner Joy.
The first attack did happen, though the Maddox was conducting intelligence gathering operations in support of South Vietnamese raids against North Vietnamese territory, hardly the innocent passage the U.S. claimed. But the second attack, which Johnson used to justify massive military escalation, likely never occurred.
Captain John Herrick of the Maddox sent an urgent message just hours after the alleged second attack: "Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports." Commander James Stockdale, flying overhead during the incident, reported seeing no enemy vessels at all.
Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ignored these doubts and rushed to Congress with claims of unprovoked aggression. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed with only two dissenting votes, giving Johnson virtually unlimited power to wage war in Southeast Asia. Even North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap later confirmed that while the first attack occurred, his forces launched no second assault. The phantom battle that justified America's massive escalation in Vietnam, leading to over 58,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties, was based on radar ghosts and nervous sonar operators mistaking weather for warfare.
5. The Nayirah Testimony and the Gulf War (1991)
In October 1990, as President George H.W. Bush built support for war against Iraq, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah gave devastating testimony before Congress. Through tears, she described volunteering at a Kuwait City hospital where she witnessed Iraqi soldiers storm in with guns. "They took the babies out of incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor," she sobbed. "It was horrifying."
Her testimony was broadcast across America and became a turning point in public opinion. President Bush cited the baby incubator story repeatedly, and it was mentioned by numerous senators and representatives as justification for the Gulf War resolution, which passed by just five votes in the Senate.
But Nayirah's story was a complete fabrication. Her full name was Nayirah al-Sabah, and she was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States. She had been coached by Hill & Knowlton, a major public relations firm working for the Kuwaiti government, as part of a sophisticated propaganda campaign to drag America into war.
After the war, journalists who investigated the claims found no evidence that Iraqi soldiers had removed babies from incubators. Hospitals in Kuwait City had no records of such incidents, and medical staff denied the story. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International, which had initially endorsed the claim and inflated the number of allegedly killed babies to over 300, later retracted their support when no evidence materialized.
The baby incubator lie was crucial in overcoming American reluctance to fight another foreign war just 15 years after Vietnam. By making Saddam Hussein appear to be a baby-killer, the Bush administration successfully transformed a conflict over oil and territory into a moral crusade that Americans felt compelled to support.
6. Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Iraq War (2003)
The most recently-famous and perhaps most consequential lie came in 2003, when the Bush administration launched the Iraq War based on claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat to American security. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations featured satellite photos, intelligence intercepts, and confident assertions about Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs.
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction," Powell declared, presenting what he called a "conservative estimate" of Iraq's arsenal. The administration claimed Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, was developing mobile biological weapons labs, and was actively seeking uranium for nuclear weapons.
Every major claim proved false. The Iraq Survey Group, led by weapons inspector David Kay, spent months searching Iraq after the invasion and found no weapons of mass destruction and no evidence of the vast arsenal described by U.S. intelligence. Kay later testified that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraqi WMD capabilities.
The intelligence failures were systematic and devastating. The mobile weapons labs turned out to be hydrogen production facilities for weather balloons. The aluminum tubes supposedly destined for uranium centrifuges were actually for conventional rockets. The Niger uranium documents were crude forgeries. Even the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency admitted that their pre-war assessments were fundamentally flawed.
Unlike previous conflicts where lies were exposed only decades later, the Iraq WMD deception unraveled in real time. By 2004, it was clear that the United States had launched a war that would ultimately cost over 4,400 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives based on lies that fooled no one except those who chose to believe them.
But here's the terrifying reality:
As I write this, we're watching the exact same playbook unfold in real time with Iran.
Major news outlets that should be questioning Trump's Iran claims are instead amplifying them. Independent journalists who dare to draw parallels to past deceptions are being deplatformed or demonetized. Even historians documenting these patterns are finding their work shadowbanned or labeled "misinformation" by the same tech platforms that helped spread the baby incubator lies.
The reality is stark: we need independent voices who can't be bought or intimidated into silence when the war drums start beating again.
Right now, less than 4% of my followers are paid subscribers. But imagine what we could accomplish with more support:
🔍 At 5% paid subscribers: I could fact-check government war claims in real-time, before the propaganda takes hold.
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References
Rust, Randal. "The Thornton Affair — The First Bloodshed of the Mexican-American War." American History Central, October 30, 2023.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Destruction of the Maine." Encyclopedia Britannica, June 2, 2025.
Davis, Tracy C. "Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon's Scripts for Overthrowing Castro." TDR: The Drama Review, Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2006, pp. 134-148.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Gulf of Tonkin incident." Encyclopedia Britannica, June 10, 2025.
MacArthur, John R. "How False Testimony and a Massive U.S. Propaganda Machine Bolstered George H.W. Bush's War on Iraq." Democracy Now!, December 5, 2018.
Richelson, Jeffrey, ed. "Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction." National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 80, February 11, 2004.
Thank you for a heart breaking, eye opening truth about history repeating itself & Presidents &/or politicians who don't care at all about the people they govern. Over inflated egos & their bank accounts are what matters to them & life really is cheap in their eyes - provided it's not their own, of course!
Wow, I have chills reading this, thank you for being so thorough and providing references.