Damned Lies: The Gulf of Tonkin

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that a newly released NSA report demonstrates that the United States government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to escalate US intervention in the Vietnamese civil war. The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships two days later. The truth was very different. Rather than being on a routine patrol on Aug. 2, 1964 the U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence gathering maneuvers coordinated with attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese commandos, navy and the Laotian air force under OpPlan 34A. One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then as Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there....There was nothing there but black water and American fire power."

Nevertheless, then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara told Congress that reports of attacks on US destroyers in the gulf by North Vietnamese patrol boats were "unimpeachable". Classified signals intelligence shows that there were no such attacks on US naval forces. President Lyndon Johnson used the alleged incident to persuade Congress to pass authorization for direct armed US intervention, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, at the subsequent cost of some 55,000 American military personnel killed in action. The resolution passed Congress with only two dissenting Senators voting no. The media shares some of the responsibility for the propaganda succeeding because journalists were in possession of information which cast doubt on the military version of events, but chose not to expose the lies. In a moment of truth, Johnson later said, "For all I know, our sailors were shooting at flying fish out there."

DEJA VUE DEPT.: After inconveniencing the residents of Jerusalem so he could view the sunrise undisturbed by city lights, the Charlatan resumed provoking Iran today after US warships in the Strait of Hormuz allegedly warned off Iranian patrol boats which dared to come close to the American ships. He repeated his assertion that Iran is "a threat to world peace." He did not mention the US invasion and occupation of formerly sovereign Iraq in his remarks.