Jesse Ventura Quotes

If you start studying history closer, you'll find that most all wars are based on false flag operations to get people - to convince the people that they're under attack in some way so that they will support the wars.

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

World War II provides a string of celebrated cases of deception and manipulation.

Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.

Among the calamities of war, may he justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

Food is as important to armies as ammunition—but more important than either is an unfailing supply of lies. You simply cannot murder your enemy in the most efficient manner if you know he is in every essential the same kind of a man as yourself.

… once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.

I had been given some training in my past CIA career to do just this sort of thing ... floating forged newspaper accounts, telegrams, that sort of thing.

How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read.

It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.

The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by stratagem.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

It is inappropriate for the Bush administration to trump up a case in which we are ballyhooed into war.

There can hardly be a more grave act imaginable than to dupe a democracy into going to war, but this is what Bush has done.

The CIA claims that secrecy is necessary to hide what it's doing from enemies of the United States ... the real reason for secrecy is to hide what the CIA is doing from the American people.

Your case for war was a pack of lies.

Plan and conduct covert operations which are conducted or sponsored by this government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. Covert action shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

If this was a graduating class of CIA case officers my advice would be short and to the point: Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counteraccusations.

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have

Propaganda is bad when it comes from the enemy. It is good when it comes from us.

A counter-insurgency is won by intelligence—not by bombardment.

John Kerry presented his confidence and his convictions. It's not about confidence, it's about evidence. The Russians have completely opposite evidence that the missiles were thrown from an area where the rebels control. This reminds me - what Kerry said - about the big lie that Collin Powell said in front of the world on satellites about the WMD in Iraq before going to war. He said "this is our evidence."

And finally, and most importantly, the next time we go to war, don't give a specific reason for the war that the left can seize upon and later flog us with it ad nauseam, just do it. Remember, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club.