On September 11, 2001, Peter Scowen's sister escaped the 54th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower barely moments before it collapsed. The shock left Scowen wondering why the twin towers were the terrorists' target. What had innocent Americans done to warrant being blown to pieces? Or was the real question what had their government done in their name? To his horror, Scowen discovered that the answer to the second question was: plenty. Far from being a beacon of democracy, Scowen found that the USA has for fifty years or more connived to overthrow, even assassinate, popularly elected leaders, to launch wars and insurrections against democratic governments, and to police the world, not to promote democracy, but in its own short-term political and commercial interests. From its unnecessary annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 to its not-so-secret war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and its dramatic flipflop from being Iraq's staunch supporter to its worst enemy, the USA has time and again left innocent civilians around the world in fear of its might and filled with loathing for its brutish ways. Even at home, the USA is no paragon of democracy and human rights, as Scowen's look at the 2000 presidential election and at its incarceration records show. Scowen's meticulously documented account of America's covert and overt operations over the last fifty years will shred its readers' illusions about the last remaining superpower's benevolent role in world affairs. - Publisher.