Spring protests planned to oppose gov't lies, war drive

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• "I am not a crook," exclaimed President Richard Nixon in a matter-of-fact defense of his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary.

• "The operation was less than success -ful," said President Jimmy Carter after U.S. military helicopters crashed on their way to Iran in a 1980 "Rambo"-style hostage rescue operation.

• "I don't see that it has been a fiasco or a great failure," said President Ronald Reagan, commenting on the uproar over his recent secret arms deal with Iran.

U.S. presidents have a great penchant for understatement—and lying. They follow EDITORIAL the standard code of capitalist politicians: "Tell the people anything but do whatever you want."

In Reagan's case, the Iranian affair was only the latest in a series of diplomatic coverups. Bernard Kalb, press secretary to Secretary of State George Shultz, resigned in October to protest what he called a "disinformation campaign" against the Qaddafi regime in Libya.

Soon after, Kalb's boss threatened to resign because he wasn't privy to the arms deal with sectors of the Iranian government.

This latest Iranian episode only proves that U.S. policy-makers don't believe their own rhetoric. The U.S. propaganda machine has consistently portrayed Iran as as one of this country's worst "foreign enemies." Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration has been sending arms to Iran.

Government propaganda and lies are exclusively designed to confuse and disorient public opinion. The objective is to whip up fears and anxieties about "foreign enemies" and "terrorists" in order to justify spending $290 billion for the so-called defense budget. This is money that (continued page