L. Neil Smith Quotes
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.
Smith, L. Neil. "The First Casualty." The Libertarian Enterprise, no. 215, 23 Mar. 2003.
Theodore Roosevelt was the Presidential nominee. See {634097} and {585962}--Samuel Johnson, for a 1758 version of this idea.
The quotation was given by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld just prior to the war with Iraq, 2003.
In December of 1940 President Roosevelt delivered a Fireside Chat calling for full aid to Britain. The senator described it as:
Trumbo was morally opposed to war. He also refused to name Hollywood communists to Congressional Committees during the Red Scare. He was then blacklisted from his occupation, screen writing.
One of the major reasons that President George W. Bush had given for invading Iraq was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. None were found.
The Presidential Campaigns of 2008 and 2012 shocked many Americans for the blatant lies that opponents of President Obama wrote and broadcast and then some of the retaliatory lies that Obama defenders responded with. However, this quotation from a 19th century political historian shows us that blatant lying in American politics is not at all new.
Lester Neil Smith III, better known as L. Neil Smith, is an American libertarian science fiction author and political activist. His works include the trilogy of Lando Calrissian novels, all published in 1983: Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon, and Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka. He also wrote the novels Pallas, The Forge of the Elders, and The Probability Broach, each of which won the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award for best libertarian science fiction novel. In 2016, Smith received a Special Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Libertarian Futurist Society.
