Spanish-American war, 1898: The surprise explosion of the battleship Maine at Havana, Cuba. 255 of the crew died. The Hearst press accused the Spanish, claiming that the explosion was caused by a remote-controlled mine. The USA declared war on Spain, and conquered Philippines, Guam and Cuba. Subsequent investigations revealed that the explosion originated inside the Maine and that it was either an accident, such as a coal explosion, or some type of time bomb inside the battleship. Divers investigating the shipwreck found that the armour plates of the ship were blown bending outwards, not inwards.
World War I, 1914-1918: A U-boat torpedo hit ocean liner Lusitania near Britain and some 1200 people, including 128 Americans, on board lost their lives. Subsequent investigations revealed that the major explosions were inside the Lusitania, as it was secretly transporting 6 million pounds of artillery shells and rifle ammunition, as well as other explosives on behalf of Morgan banking corporation to help their clients, the Britain and the France. It was against US laws to transport war materials and passengers in the same ship.
World War 2, 1939-1945: A U-boat torpedo hit the ocean liner Athenia near Britain with some 1100 passengers, of which 311 were Americans. The sea was calm and only 118 people on board lost their lives. The ship was sunk because it behaved like a military transport, blackened out and zigzagging. This incident wasn't enough to precipitate war, and the Germans also refused to be provoked by several American acts of war. Americans confiscated German merchant ships, and Americans started to support the British with various lend-lease items, US volunteer pilots joined the RAF and some RAF pilots were trained in the US, US gave the British 50 old but usable WW1 destroyers and 20 modern torpedo boats, tanks, light bombers, fighter aircraft like P-40s and so on. American destroyers also escorted the convoys bound to Britain, and attacked German U-boats even far away from those convoys. The US did not maintain a neutral stance attitude towards the warring nations.
The US naval intelligence, chief of Japan desk planned and suggested "8 insults", which should bring Japan into war with the US. President Roosevelt executed this plan immediately and also added some other insults, enraging the Japan. The most serious one was a total blockade of Japanese oil imports, as agreed between the Americans, British and the Dutch. FDR also declared an all-out embargo against the Japan and forbade them the use of Panama canal, impeding Japan's access to Venezuelan oil.
The Flying Tigers volunteer air group successfully fighting the Japanese in China with some 90 fairly modern P-40Bs was another effective provocation that is not generally acknowledged by historical accounts of World War 2, most of which fail to mention any air combat action prior to 7th December 1941. But at that time the Japanese had already had lost about 100 military aircraft, mostly bombers, to the Tigers. After Pearl Harbor these squadrons were some of the the hardest-hitting ones in the US service.
The attack on Pearl Harbour followed some 6 months later. Having broken the Japanese encryption codes, the Americans knew what was going to happen, when and where, but the president did not dispatch this information to Pearl Harbor. Americans even gave their friends the British 3 Magic decrypting machines which automatically opened encrypted Japanese military traffic. But this same information was not available to the commanders of Hawaii. The movement of the fleet was also visible in the very effective radio direction finding network. Japan had an alliance with Germany, and the Germans upheld their promises by declaring the war against the USA right after the Japanese declaration.
Two scapegoats, the navy commander Admiral Husband Kimmel, and the army commander Lt. General Walter Short were found incompetent and demoted as they were allowed to retire. Short died 1949 and Kimmel 1958. In 1995, the US Congress re-examined this decision and endorsed it. Then in 2000 some archive information came to light and the US Senate passed a resolution stating that both had served in Hawaii "competently and professionally". In 1941 they were denied vital information, and even on presidential orders purposefully mislead into believing that the Japanese feet could be expected from the southwest. These commanders have yet to be rehabilited by the Pentagon.
Vietnam War: "The Tonkin incident", where American destroyer Maddox was supposedly attacked twice by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened. What was happening at the time were aggressive South Vietnamese raids against the North in the same general area. Huge American presence wasn't decisive and President Nixon negotiated a "peace with honour" in 1973. This war was lost, when North Vietnam finally conquered South Vietnam in 1975.
Grenada invasion: The Grenadian leader, Maurice Bishop, favouring the left and having invited Cubans to help build the infrastructure including by extending the airport to accomodate long range Soviet aircraft, was deposed and executed in October 19, 1983. Six days later the US invaded, with the proffered reason that the American medical students studying in the Grenada were in danger due the Cuban presence. The new leader supported by the US favoured more traditional values and the right.
US-Israeli sponsored war between Iraq and Iran, 1980-1988: The US has built power bases in the Middle East in Iran starting with the CIA-organised coup 1953, where Iranian prime minister Mossadeq was replaced with the Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi and he by his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran was equipped with the best western military equipment, including the American F-14 fighters with Phoenix missiles and the British Chieftain MBTs. Unfortunately there was in 1979 a coup of ayatollah Khomeini replacing the Shah and founding an Islamite nation.
After this, the US warmed up relations with their good Iraqi friend Saddam Hussein, and started to build a nation capable of challenging the Iran. Iraq acquired large numbers of effective weapons including factories able to produce older versions of gas warfare agents. These would later be called WMDs, which of course they were not, being the WW1-vintage weapons.
The war broke out and was fought to exhaustion because third-party powers, especially Israel, were carefully monitoring the power balance supplying more weapons to the side which seemed to be loosing. "Too bad they both cannot loose" is how Kissinger evaluated this situation.
Desert Storm (First Gulf war), 1991): Hussein asked for permission from the US (via their ambassador April Gillespie) and got an answer that the US does not care Arab quarrels. That was a trap, and after Saddam occupied Kuwait, George Bush Sr. mobilised a coalition of some 40 nations to "liberate Kuwait" and to smash the recently-built Iraqi military power base. This also involved a media hoax, where the daughter of Kuwaiti US ambassador played nurse on TV and testified to "witnessing" Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait.
Enduring Justice (Second Gulf war), 20.3.2003-: later known with less irony as Operation Iraqi Freedom The claimed reason of the attack was that Iraq was a clear and present danger to the US with wmd's available within less than an hour after the decision to assemble them has been made. Since no wmd's were found, and after the Iraqi also scrapped some 800 long range Scud style missiles before the US coalition attack, the reason for the invasion was changed into "bringing the democracy into Iraq". 911review.com/articles/anon/false_flag_perations.html