None Dare Call iT...
Conspiracy(wikipedia) I could have sworn that, when teaching about the destruction of the USS Maine inciting the Spanish-American War, that my teacher noted that it could have been staged by the American government to give reason to declare war. Granted, it's been a few years, but I am pretty sure that that was what we learned. Anyone else learn it that way?--HantaVirus 13:05, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
This conspiracy theory is assumed as proven in the Spanish version of this article, citing the disclosure of Top Secret documents from the US 100 years after the incident. The problem is, there is no reference to that. Is anybody aware of these top secret document disclosure?
In Spain it is widely believed that the USS Maine was blown up either by the USA or by a pro-USA cuban faction in order to provoke the war between Spain and them, since it was clear that Spain could not win it: it didn't have neither the resources nor the willness needed to win a trans-athlantical war; the days of the Spanish Empire were long gone. Of course, you won't find any true proofs about it if you only research US papers, for it would be too shameful to admit that kind of trick. However, as I said, since Spain couldn't win the war, and because the USA haven't proved to be very trustworthy in matters of diplomacy, spaniards usually tend to believe that it was the USA who sunk its own ship. I've read plenty of conspiracy theorist who insist that the descruction of the USS Maine was a false-flag operation by the US Government, and most of the people who preach this nonsense are 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists. Whenever I encounter these idiots, I remind them that it was an accidental boiler explosion that William Randoph Hearst claimed was an attack by Spain, not the federal government. ----DanTD (talk) 17:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)