Section Seven:
Homegrown Repression
* Repression has a long history in America every bit as old in the nation. Most Americans are not taught, for example, that most founding fathers did not want the Bill of Rights. The original Constitution, before any of the amendments, was clearly a document of power, who has it and can use it, and does not have any mention of rights.
* What distinguishes this section from atrocities in wartime is intent. In the US-Vietnamese War, for example, there were four separate actions each requiring their own criticisms of a presidency. There was the war itself, launched for reasons of ideological blindness and run with extreme incompetence. There were atrocities within the war, not intended by presidents nor their administration, but pardoned after the fact. There was biological and chemical warfare in the use of Agent Orange and napalm. Finally there was a campaign of repression, the Phoenix Program, approved by two presidents and maintained for over half a decade. All these campaigns of repression either originated in Washington, or Washington worked side by side with campaigns of repression overseas from virtually the beginning.