Understanding Daily #1

I have a collection of one-paragraph excerpts from articles I have read over the past year concerning the Iraq war. Each time, as I stumbled upon these little nuggets of information I felt like I was being given a small beam of understanding. It is a constantly evolving process, just like with all of us. Since there is so much controversy about our involvement in the Middle East and the reasons why we are there, and since so much misery and death and future danger is being caused by it, I feel a need to come to my own ideas of what is going on.

I thought I would start sharing some of these excepts with you. I know that not everyone will agree with the material that shapes my thoughts and that's okay. Nothing is set in stone in my mind, but the paragraphs I wish to present have had an edifying effect on at least my own comprehension: 

This all happened because too few questioned those myths by which we have lived. Our national history is a lie: because the truth and all its attendant crimes have been suppressed. We did not bring Democracy & Freedom to the more than 50 nations that we overthrew: we brought them tyranny, corruption, chaos and murder-but we brought them these "gifts" in the guise of Freedom & Democracy. So many nations contain the horror-stories of invasions by the United States, and the dark memories that we left them with, long after our appetites for their natural resources were used up or forcibly removed. 

http://www.rense.com/general76/cracks.htm