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The Scripts Parents Were Handed: War Explanations from 1918 to 2003

Every generation of American parents has been handed a short, reasonable-sounding explanation of a war. Parents repeated it at dinner and to their children. Later the record came out, and in case after case the script and the record did not match. This page lays five of those scripts side by side. A parent in 2026 does not have to believe that every government lies. It is enough to notice that the short version is always easier to repeat than the record, and that it has been wrong before in ways that cost children their lives.

1918: "He kept us out of war"​

A World War I pamphlet titled War Fact Tests for Every American, written for a rural teacher who wanted material for a school debate in Easter week 1918, explained "TEN REASONS WHY WE ARE AT WAR." It recalled how the country had felt only two years before:

"'He kept us out of war' and 'We are to be kept out of war' were two prayers of thanksgiving which were uttered by millions of mothers and fathers." — War Fact Tests for Every American, scan on Wikimedia Commons (the scan's text is damaged in places)

Then it explained why the country had to fight after all: the attacks had "opened our eyes," and the war was "To make the world safe for democracy." The pamphlet noted that for "thirty-two months of this world war, August 1914 to April 1917, the United States—its people and its government—did their best to keep out of war," and that the 1916 election "was generally accepted as evidence that the majority of our people opposed our going to war."

Read the sequence. Parents prayed for peace. The majority opposed war. Then the war came, and the government printed "fact tests" to teach children why it was necessary. The phrase "opened our eyes" was used to get Americans into the war, not out of it.

1969: "And babies?"​

In 1969, CBS News's Mike Wallace interviewed an Army private, Paul Meadlo, about the killing of civilians at My Lai in Vietnam on March 16, 1968. The journalist Amy Goodman later recalled the exchange: "Q: 'And babies?' A: 'And babies.'" Meadlo described the scene: "They was begging and saying, 'No, no.' And the mothers was hugging their children and … well, we kept right on firing." Seymour Hersh, who broke the story after major outlets turned it down, said Wallace "asked him five times in that interview, 'And babies?'" Goodman wrote: "These four words, broadcast by CBS News in 1969, had a profound impact on the American public, the Nixon presidency and the course of the Vietnam War" (Pressenza, Amy Goodman, June 24, 2018).

The script had been that America was defending a people. The record, when a soldier finally said it on camera, was that "U.S. soldiers slaughtered over 500 civilians over the course of the day," in Goodman's words, babies among them. The parents of the young men sent to Vietnam were drafted into that war through their sons.

1990: the girl who testified about incubators​

In October 1990, before the first Gulf War, a fifteen-year-old girl told members of Congress that Iraqi soldiers had pulled babies out of incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals. A father summarized the case in September 2026, as it is now taught: "she was the kuwaiti ambassador's daughter. her testimony was written and rehearsed by hill and knowlton, a pr firm paid 10.8 million dollars by the kuwaiti government. the incubator story was fabricated." His conclusion: "the gulf war opened with a scripted tear. every war since has started with a crying child on television. ask who wrote the script" (@sahil_vi, September 20, 2026; he did not attach sources, but the case is well documented and quick to check). Another account in June 2026 listed the same testimony, by the girl's name, Nayirah al-Sabah, among examples of regimes using children to sell wars (@OvertIntent, June 30, 2026).

2002: the retired generals on television​

After September 11, the Pentagon ran a program in which retired officers appeared on television as independent "military analysts." The Center for Media and Democracy wrote: "The program was launched in 2002 to help sell the Iraq war, but soon expanded to other controversial issues," and it was documented in "8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents," which the Center converted into a searchable archive and called an "illegal propaganda program" (PR Watch, August 12, 2008). The friendly retired general on the evening news was not always what he appeared to be. Glenn Greenwald later pointed readers to a CNN transcript from April 16, 2003 about a wounded Iraqi boy, noting "This was not really aberrational for media discourse at the time" and that "The boy's only comment, the doctor said, was 'he hopes nobody from the children in the war they will suffer like what he suffer'" (@ggreenwald, March 22, 2023). Of the New York Times reporter Judith Miller's prewar reporting on Iraq's weapons, a 2026 retrospective noted that "her work became a scandal but only after it had played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies" (quoted in a research capture of an unsigned 2026 text; see Iraq WMD Precedent for the record).

2003: the script for children​

When the Iraq war began, the Harvard Gazette printed expert advice for parents, including a script: "Explain that people in a place called Iraq are being treated horribly by the people who run that country. The United States is going to war to help them. Unfortunately, some people will get hurt, or even die." Its headline advice: "Tell the truth, keep it simple" (Harvard Gazette, April 10, 2003).

In 2026, the parallel script arrived on schedule. The President, in his April 1 address, said American service members had died "to prevent our children from ever having to face a nuclear Iran," and called the war "a true investment in your children and your grandchildren's future" (as transcribed by @OwenGregorian, April 2, 2026). A mother in August described teaching her daughter that the war was a fight to help Iranian women (@amani_zang, August 20, 2026). It is the 2003 script with a new country's name in it.

What the scripts have in common​

YearThe scriptWhat the record showed
1918"He kept us out of war," then "make the world safe for democracy"The majority opposed war; a pamphlet taught children why it was necessary anyway
1969America defending a people"And babies"
1990Babies thrown from incubatorsTestimony scripted by a PR firm paid by a foreign government
2002–2003Independent experts; weapons of mass destructionA Pentagon messaging program; no weapons
2026A war for "your children's future"See the rest of this investigation

Every script was simple. Every script was about children. And every one worked on the part of a parent Plato called the black horse: the part that wants the question closed. Quotation pages keep the oldest version of the warning: Hiram Johnson's line "The first casualty when war comes is truth," and Doris Lessing's "The first casualty in any war is the truth," with her memory of a wartime study group that "used to meet once a week with the sole purpose of analyzing the news and trying to work out what we weren't being told. We thought that we were clever, but we had absolutely no idea what was really going on" (quote.org).

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t10__v109.md, t10__v112.md, t10__v117.md, t10__v119.md, t10__v120.md, t71__v847.md.

Status: Amy Goodman, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, and Judith Miller are alive. Nothing on this page is a claim that any of them committed a crime.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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