The Man Who Never Was plan was executed as Operation Mincemeat and, while it’s a nice story and all, it probably doesn’t compare to the truly enormous deception perpetrated the following year with Operation Fortitude. Fortitude South relied heavily upon a very live body, General George S. Patton. The Germans considered Patton to be the best Allied field commander, the Allies knew that, and since Patton had put himself in the doghouse by slapping a private anyhow, he was the perfect choice to command the ficticious First U.S. Army Group at Dover.
Cecil’s latest article on Potemkin Villages appears to qualify, as do the rumors about Catherine the Great taking horse riding to extremes.
There have been a number of famous fraudulent artifacts–ahem, misrepresentations. Another famous “man who never was,” to quote the link, was Piltdown Man. The Shroud of Turin might also qualify as a fraud.
And then there was Emperor Frederick II, who supposedly fingered three people as the greatest frauds in history. It’s probably best not to go there…
How about the great “Spanish Prisoner” scam? Check out this letter from 1910 and tell me if it sounds familiar to any of you with e-mail:
I would ask you for a cite but you know how this religion thing work… there is a general lack of facts that have to be replaced with faith… still calling the inmaculate conception a lie is a bit strong. Don´t you think so?
Here are six big lies that I think are oft overlooked in history…
The British promise to the Jews as per the Balfour Declaration during WWI for the establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine. (Which the British government reneged on at the end of WWI, thus paving the way for Holocaust.)
The Slapton Sands incident in southern England in April or May of 1944 when over 900 U.S. troops were killed and lost in the English Channel after their LSTs/LCIs were sunk by German u-boats while they were rehearsing for D-day. The U.S. government covered up their deaths, by attributing them to the D-day landings in order exculpate badly needed commanders and prevent the Germans from finding out they were preparing for D-day.
The whole premise behind the U.S. war effort in Vietnam of allegedly fighting a communist insurgency, exposed as pretext by Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the DoD’s Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post et al., in 1971.
Then Army Major Colin Powell’s dismissive finding in an official inspector general’s report for divisional HQ of the 22nd Americal Division regarding allegations of a “massacre” of civilian unarmed non-combatants in the village of Mai-lai, Rep. of Vietnam, allegedly perpetrated by a U.S. Army infantry company from the Americal Dvision.
The Clinton administration’s dismissal of culpability regarding the U.S. Army’s responsilbility for “the Bridge at No Gun-Ri” incident during the Korean War, which involved execution-style murder of 200+ Korean civilian non-combatants by the U.S. Army during the opening phase of that war, as exposed by the AP in 1999.
The well-orchestrated deception by the Allies that Patton would lead invasion forces to landings at Pas de Calais on D-day.
The German pre-fascist explanation for the reason why they lost WWI – the “Dolchstosslegende” – i.e., the reason that the Germans lost WWI was because the German government betrayed the German army by “stabbing them in the back” by caving into concessions made at Versailles without putting up a fight to the Great Powers.
How does either of these qualify as a lie? If you are referring to the “all men are created equal” line in each document, perhaps you should have narrowed it down to just that. A case can be made for hypocricy, or perhaps cynicism on the part of the writer of each. But the Declaration was not a lie, and neither was the address. That their authors were not altogether honest doesn’t make the whole of their writing a lie.
“WE hold these Truths to be self-evident,…” is just too juicy to deconstruct. Beautiful words, rock solid to base your faith on, all untrue.
Note on the Gettysburg Address
by H.L. Mencken
“The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”
New Iskander: No, the Confederates were fighting for the Plantation system, a system founded upon slavery and sharecropping. There was no self-determination in the Confederacy, save for a few mean and petty examples called plantation owners.
The Union soldiers, on the other hand, were fighting for a pre-Industrial socioeconomic system that proved to be more egalitarian than the Plantation system could possibly have been. I’m not saying that Industrial America was particularly egalitarian (I know it wasn’t), but that the egalitarianism we’ve achieved now is a direct descendent from the Industrial era and could not have come out of any Plantation system.
As for your “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident,…”, I don’t quite get what you mean: Is that phrase stupid, or is the whole document stupid? Do you disagree with the proposition that all men are created equal, or do you disagree with the men who wrote that line? Because that’s really what the Declaration says, once you strip away the list of grievances: Everyone is born equal, and born with certain rights no person or government can rightfully take away from them. If you disagree with that statement, I suppose we’ll have a debate.
At a guess? The phrase “all men are created equal” is false on close examination…all men aren’t CREATED equal, and no act of government can make them so. After all, a man born deformed is not PHYSICALLY equal to a man born whole. A man born a genius is not equal to a man born with a learning disability. A man born in the ghetto is not equal (as far as opertunities) as a man born in a mansion. etc etc…
I’ve heard this kind of thing before, so thats my guess as to what New Iskander is saying. Of course, this totally ignores the INTENT of the saying…which is all men are equal in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the government, and no man shall be treated differently. Even that, I suppose you could argue, is not what reality is. However, its a IDEAL…and a damn good one, IMO.
Anyway, if I’m wrong about your intent, New Iskander, what did you mean?
(BTW, I’m using ‘men’ in the form of ‘mankind’…not the male gender only. Just wanted to clear that up before someone tags me for being a sexist :))
I got the very same letter in my email. He blessed both of us, since we are both such good friends of his! Kind of clever to enlist God in his scam. :rolleyes:
I’ve received several variations of this in the last few months, most of them from Africa. I think fraud is getting to be a cottage industry in some of those countries. Who is actually stupid enough to fall for this dodge?
I’ve had the very same letter and like everyone else I immediately replied with my bank details, I will be very rich in less than 2 weeks
It was reported in the UK press last week that some dozy woman had replied to an e-mail from Imelda Marcos?? …that’s right the daft sod lost her life savings.
