This is an interesting post, but I understand Bretts skepticism. Any information that we aquire is written with some sort of bias or opinion. That is just human nature.No wars were fought to help the opressed?I can agree is somewhat of a opinion/observation. A lot of the people fighting them belive they are helping the opressed...now what the government officials set them into motion for is another Topic that I think only top politcal insiders could put a real clear understanding to. In the case of Hitler, America was not the only government that let his evil grow out of control. If people have not realized it by now our world works off of a sort of you scratch my back I scratch yours, I'll turn my back to this, until things get to out of hand and become a threat to our nation mentality.If a nation doesn't forsee some sort of gain in a war they will try hard to not initiate one. Being a just freedom fighting people is all great and dandy but realistically a nation cannot thrive off of that principle. As for this "Also, another interesting fact, researchers believe his men were responsible for bringing syphilis into Europe and, thus, caused the deaths of as many 5 million Europeans." Is just that a belief held by some researchers. It is not proven, some researchers believe that they brought the std to the new world. The finding of bone lesions consistent with syphilis in the remains of a medieval woman found in Essex, England, dating to circa 1296-1445 suggest that syphilis was already present there before Columbus Traveled to the "New World"."-Microbiology suite. Oh and I saw a comment stating Columbus was Spanish? He was Italian born in Genoa. There is truth mixed with speculation in this artical...it is not all fact. Actually a lot of the things we read about in history happned so long ago that things can't always be the real story. And with that said it's safe to say some things we know as fact may not be after all. Still I think it was a good read.