From Watergate to downing street: lying for war.

You wouldn't know it from the media's recent focus on Deep Throat, but the lies that Richard Nixon told about the Watergate break-in were part of his standard duplicity for the Vietnam War. It wasn't just that the Nixon administration engaged in secret illegal actions against a wide range of peace advocates--including antiwar candidate George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972. Deception was always central to Nixon's war policy. Thirty-three years after Watergate, echoes of his fervent lies for war can now be heard from George W. Bush.

From the outset of his presidency Nixon falsely claimed to be seeking an end to the war. "I know that peace does not come through wishing for it--that there is no substitute for days and even years of patient and prolonged diplomacy," he declared in his first inaugural address. Independent journalist I.F. Stone commented days later, "It's easier to make war when you talk peace"

A year into his first term Nixon told the nation: "I pledged in my campaign for the presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed"

In 1971 Nixon "was increasing deceptively labeled 'protective reaction strikes' against the North to a level that amounted to the resumption of [President Lyndon] Johnson's bombing" Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg recalls. "Starting the day after Christmas 1971 [six months after the Pentagon Papers came out], he launched a thousand U.S. bombers during five days of bombing against North Vietnam, in the heaviest raids since 1968" Ellsberg adds:

   Most Americans in truth
   had wanted out of the war
   long before the [Pentagon]
   papers were published; a
   majority had even come to
   regard it as immoral.... In
   the face of that majority
   sentiment, the president
   had kept the war going by
   reducing ground troops,
   while he increased the
   bombing, and by recurrently
   convincing the public
   that he was on the verge of a
   settlement. He did that
   again in the next few
   months, unveiling in January
   1972 the secret talks and
   a deceptively "generous"
   offer that he knew was
   unacceptable to Hanoi.

In public Nixon spoke with gravity about the war and his yearning for peace. In private, tape recordings tell us, top-level discussions were something else.

For instance, on May 4, 1972--while conferring with Henry Kissinger, Al Haig, and John Connally--President Nixon said:

   I'll see that the United States
   does not lose. I'm putting it
   quite bluntly, I'll be quite
   precise. South Vietnam may
   lose. But the United States
   cannot lose. Which means,
   basically, I have made the
   decision. Whatever happens
   to South Vietnam, we are
   going to cream North Vietnam....
   For once, we've got
   to use the maximum power
   of this country ... against
   this shit-ass little country:
   to win the war. We can't
   use the word 'win.' But
   others can.

Nixon continued to assure the public that he was among the war makers perennially in pursuit of peace. In his second inaugural address Nixon repeated his mantra for a "lasting peace." Moments after being sworn in again, he resumed spinning for the history books and more immediately for public opinion. "Because of America's bold initiatives" he said, "1972 will be long remembered as the year of the greatest progress since the end of World War II toward a lasting peace in the world"

What Nixon didn't mention was that he had recently inflicted a huge new wave of murderous violence against the Vietnamese people. In his memoir, Secrets, Ellsberg describes the late December 1972 bombing spree this way: "President Nixon sent B-52s over Hanoi for the first time ever. In the next 11 days and nights--with Christmas off--American planes dropped on North Vietnam 20,000 tons of bombs," amounting to "the explosive equivalent of the Nagasaki A-bomb."

But on January 20, 1973, just weeks after the massive Christmastime bombing of North Vietnam, Nixon spoke with notable shamelessness, laying claim to the mantle of peacemaker: "Let us be proud that by our bold, new initiatives, and by our steadfastness for peace with honor, we have made a breakthrough toward creating in the world what the world has not known before--a structure of peace that can last, not merely for our time but for generations to come."

Three decades later, on May 1, 2003, under a "Mission Accomplished" banner, President George W. Bush used the dramatic backdrop of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln near San Diego to proclaim the end of major hostilities in Iraq. But the occupation set off an escalating pattern of large-scale killing.

On May 1, 2005, exactly two years after Bush's top-gun appearance, the Times of London revealed the "Downing Street memo"--instantly a huge story in the British press but slow to gain any traction in major U.S. media outlets. In early June front pages across the United States filled up with stories about Deep Throat and the bygone Watergate era. But editors at major newspapers still couldn't spare prominent space for scrutiny of the Downing Street memo--smoking-gun minutes from a top-level meeting of British officials convened by Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002.

The memo makes clear that President Bush was lying when he publicly kept claiming that he hadn't decided yet whether to order an invasion of Iraq. Bush's actual policy was to launch the war, no matter what. In addition, the memo said, at the top levels of the administration in Washington, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Like Richard Nixon, the current president insists that he wants peace. And, in a twisted sense, he does. As the Prussian general Karl von Clausewitz remarked two centuries ago, "A conqueror is always a lover of peace."

On his own terms, of course.

This article is adapted from Norman Solomon's new book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, which was released in June 2005. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com.