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• Used a fabricated attack on the US destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin to launch full-scale war on Vietnam. Johnson contributed to countless atrocities in Vietnam: “free-fire zones”, “carpet bombing”, napalming and the dropping of Agent Orange defoliants were part of official military policy and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Johnson supported the CIA's infamous Operation Phoenix in Southeast Asia, a program to round up, torture and kill suspected political rivals and dissidents. Routine techniques of torture, often taught in US military schools, included: electrocution through the genitals, inflicting brain damage by driving wooden dowels through the ears, suffocation and poisoning by placing hoods soaked in insecticide over the heads of prisoners, and throwing prisoners out of airplanes. • Supported the violent overthrow of the government of Loas and initiated a massive bombing campaign, later continued by Nixon, upon the people of Laos. In 1970, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported: “For the past two years the US has carried out one of the most sustained bombing campaigns in history against essentially civilian targets in northeastern Laos.... Operating from Thai bases and from aircraft carriers, American jets have destroyed the great majority of villages and towns in the northeast. Severe casualties have been inflicted upon the inhabitants ... Refugees from the Plain of Jars report they were bombed almost daily by American jets last year. They say they spent most of the past two years living in caves or holes.” Meo villagers, who attempted neutrality or refused to send their 13-year-olds to fight in the CIA's army, were refused American-supplied rice and ultimately bombed by the US Air Force. The CIA also dropped millions of dollars in forged Pathet Lao currency in an attempt to destabilize the Lao economy. • Continued US support of repressive regimes throughout Latin America, through CIA and military operations, military training, sale of arms and aggressive propaganda campaigns aimed at annihilating progressive political movements, labor movements and efforts to defend human rights. In the period of October 1966 to March 1968, in Guatemala alone, it is estimated that upwards of 8,000 Guatemalans were killed by US sponsored military and police death squads. By 1970, over 30,000 Guatemalan police had received their training directly from the US Agency for International Development. Meanwhile, US airplanes, taking off from Panama, ran regular "testing" missions into Guatemala, where villages suspected of hiding guerrilla forces were regularly destroyed by napalm and air-to-ground rockets. In Peru, the US set up a "miniature Fort Bragg" in the Peruvian jungle and proceeded to wipe out several guerrilla groups, which had arisen in response to the deep-seated poverty of the Peruvian masses. In Brazil, President Goulart was overthrown by a US backed military coup after Goulart called for economic and social reforms, openly opposed sanctions against Cuba and nationalized a subsidiary of ITT. For the next 15 years, brutal dictatorships, with the help of the US, controlled Brazil, where it became literally illegal to criticize the president. Brazil quickly became the US' most reliable ally in Latin America. • Supported General Suharto's dictatorship of Indonesia. Soon after Suharto took power, the Indonesian military, which was closely tied with the US military, began to massacre political opponents in what became one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history. It was later learned that the US embassy in Indonesia had compiled lists of as many as 5000 “communists”, and handed them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. • Supported the 1967 Israeli seizer of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. The Israeli military occupation of this land, with its attendant discrimination against Palestinians and violation of international law, continues to this day. The inauguration of the longstanding American-Israel alliance was solidified under President Johnson, who accelerated US arms shipments to become Israel’s primary supplier.
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