The info about world war I being extended years longer to empower war profiteering comes from an old documentary from the 1930's entitled "Dealers in Death". Its really old but should probably be required viewing before people decide whether to support wars in the middle east or with russia.
Thank you, hope I can find it.
Do you detect how most of the media reports about Russia say something like 'interfering with the 2016 US election?' This is not technically wrong, but includes a lot of really bad stuff, instead of being more specific, i.e. Russia stole and published information that was embarrassing to Hilary Clinton. Of course, the media have no agenda...
A great book to read would be 'Confessions of An Economic Hit Man.' The author worked for the imperial machinery. Over the postwar decades the US worked hard to get leaders around the world to play the game to support the dollar and other core imperial interests. The methods used were (in first-to-last order) bribing, political coup, assassination, and armed invasion. Most visibly involved were countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Panama, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Iraq. The media were heavily involved in shaping public opinion just the right way.
This is a must-read for those who still believe in the imperial fairy-tale.
The rest can be found via google. "US soldiers guard taliban opium fields." "Opium production up since afghan US war." "Glass steagall and its impact on the 2008 economic crisis." Some of the things I said might sound crazy but info on those topics which support what I said is very easy to find, I would imagine.
As you imply, it's very easy to fall into the belief that the US is the benevolent superpower (or at least the 'least-bad world leader') while all these horrible accusations are only conspiracy theories that can't possibly be true.
This is due to most people not understanding the dynamics of money and finance at the core of the system. By manipulating only these deeply buried systems, the empire is able to look like a democracy with free markets on the surface (even though the truth occasionally pokes through the facade even for most people, as during the Great Depression and 2008.)
Just as interesting is how the financial dynamics also force the empire to commit horrible crimes, eventually if not right away. The whole thing is based on deception, and if the financial bubbles burst, the entire world system blows up. The elites themselves have the incentives to make the deception less and less credible, and the brutal means more and more necessary, over time. The horrible crimes are not wild accusations. They are inevitable.