E Gad! Whatever gave you all these odd ideas?
Ever wonder why the designation for the BAR is M-1918? Do you suppose that the "1918" might mean something in particular? Kind of like the Colt .45 cal. Automatic, the M-1911A1, or the Springfield Rifle, the M-1903? Can you take a wild guess as to what those numbers mean? Further, the BAR was not developed by the US government or the US Army, it was developed by John Browning at the request of the Government to replace the French and British weapons being issued to US troops. And why were they being issued these weapons? Well, maybe because the US did not have an infantry squad machine gun in its inventory.
And what makes you think it was not used by US troops in WWI?
The problem, which you seem to want to address as some sort of sordid scheme to insure higher losses, was actually one of development, production, and availability.
The US entered WWI in April 1917 and troops started seeing combat that summer. Browning and Colt had been working on the design prior to the US entry, and the design was accepted in May 1917. Production contracts were awarded in September, under license, with Marlin Rockwell Corp and Winchester Repeating Arms Co. First delivery by Winchester came at the end of December and from Marlin in the beginning of January 1918. Evidently that was close enough for the 1918 designation, especially since Browning was already producing the M-1917 .30 cal water-cooled machine gun.
The BAR started making it's appearance in the summer of 1918 and first went into combat on 12 September. By the time of the Armistice, some 52,000 plus BARs had been delivered and another 50,000 were produced and delivered by late 1919. There was never a withholding for security purposes.
So, you have private industry developing a weapon, the weapon is accepted, it goes into production and the first units reach the troops all in about 14 months from acceptance, and into combat in 16 months. On the whole, weapons development wise, that's not too bad, especially for a weapon that remained in service into the 1960s.
On a personal note, I remember running through about 6 magazines in 1965. From a prone position it was a fairly easy weapon to control and keep on target if you kept your wits about you, very smooth and surprising little recoil. I was about 13 years old at the time.
About the only thing you got right was the lack of reliability under field conditions of the French weapon, except it was not a "Cho cho". The weapon was the 8mm Lebel chambered Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 'CRSG' (Model 1915), generally referred to as the "Chauchat." "Cho-cho" or "Sho-sho" was the American corruption of the pronounciation of Chauchat. US troops also used the Lewis light machine gun which was much more reliable than the Chauchat.
No offense, but the BAR development and deployment history is pretty straight forward and easily researched. And doesn't come close to what you posted. Criticize the Chauchat as it well deserves (even the French didn't like it, but it was the only game in town), but please save the conspiracy stuff for the folks in the collander hats.
Rich