Report reveals Vietnam War hoaxes, faked attacks

Source: Linked from Raw Story site, source is AFP

But he said that probably the "most historically significant feature" of the declassified report was the retelling of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.

That was a reported North Vietnamese attack on American destroyers that helped lead to president Lyndon Johnson's sharp escalation of American forces in Vietnam.

The author of the report "demonstrates that not only is it not true, as (then US) secretary of defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack was 'unimpeachable,' but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that 'no attack happened that night,'" FAS said in a statement.

"What this study demonstrated is that the available intelligence shows that there was no attack. It's a dramatic reversal of the historical record," Aftergood said.

Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Report_reveals_Vietnam_War_hoaxes_f_01082008.html

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Someone is trying to get people educated in some not-to distant history. Help them remind people that those who profit from wars they expect others to fight and die in should be taken with some skepticism when they cry wolf. Or when they cry 'some guys in some boats made some threats to our ships somewhere near Iran'

Some worker bees in NSA want America to notice some similarities. Let us work to spread the history lesson so we don't end up repeating it.

I felt certain that something like this was going to happen.

This is a very important topic. Let's keep it kicked and recommended!

Time to crank up the fear and rage!

it makes me sad to realize, on a daily basis, that I do not, and cannot, in good conscience, believe a single word that comes out of ANY member of this lying, thieving, maladministration.

When I saw the footage of the speedboats, I laughed my ass off.

Yeah, yeah, I realize it was a dinghy that took out the U.S.S. Cole, but this was broad daylight (better for filming) and anyone with an automatic weapon (and I'm sure they lined the decks) could have stopped them.

The administration is getting increasingly desperate and therefore, more dangerous. Our only defense is to discount their actions, laugh at them heartily and treat them with the derision they deserve.

...I spend a lot of time reminding people of that.

Best circumstance to obtain his desired result.... when Iran attempts to do it again Bush should row out to greet them. If they attack Bush then we declare war.

:crazy:

time and energy on something that will take our attention away from the real culprits,

It's always about the $$ for the really powerful.

We have to do a better job of educating people. And I don't mean getting them ready to join the damn rat race.

Not everyone (Like Me) is a History buff, people gradutating from High School these days
dont even know hardly any History or Geography............we need to revamp the
Education system and focus on those things.................


:hi:

Fall of 2000, in the heat of the election campaign, I was in a graduate class on social issues, particularly the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.

One of my fellow students, Doug J., was a high school American history teacher, recently graduated from Arizona State University and certified by the Arizona Department of Education. He was probably not more than 23 or 24 years old. Most of the other students in the class were in their late 30s and older; at 52, I was not the oldest by any means.

Doug and I got into a rather testy exchange about media coverage and public awareness of 'movements' when I pointed out to him that --

"By the late 1960s, there were a lot of different social issues that had prompted people to march and protest and establish directed 'movements.' In addition to the civil rights movement, there was the women's rights movement, the gay rights movement, and of course the anti-war movement."

He snorted a dismissive bit of laughter and sneered, "And what war was THAT? The cold war?" as if implying that no one actually PROTESTED the cold war.

I just gave him a puzzled look and wondered where the hell he had been when he was studying for his degree in American history.

"No, Doug, the Vietnam War. You never heard of it?"

The look on his face suggested maybe he hadn't.

He would later, in another class, proclaim that Ronald Reagan was the greatest and most charismatic president ever because "he singlehandedly ended the cold war and destroyed the Soviet Union." One of the professors laughed in his face.

I don't know if Doug is still teaching. He dropped out of the graduate program shortly after the Reagan remark.

Why should we believe what they say now? When is a LIAR supposed to be believed?

my first thought was oh another faux attack like the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Last night on the drive home from the metro, I listened to some taking head explain how the Iranians had dropped white boxes in the water which we should assume contained explosives and detonating devices and that the ships had authority to open fire on the Iranian fast boats but didn't and he couldn't understand why they had not, since the fast boats had guns and in the wake of the USS Cole incident the rules of engagement had changed. His tone regarding the ships not firing on the fast boats was at once disappointed and annoyed. Terror, terror, terror.

and cheney is being backed into a corner. He has been too quiet also.

But his successors certainly did.

JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

It reads as though this is big news about Tonkin. The point is that this relates directly to the latest administration claim that our ships had been threatened in the Gulf of Hormuz. Our ships threatened in THEIR waters. Who do you really think is trying to provoke an attack?

I remember having to load 5inch 38 projectiles in the gun mounts in case we had to go to a shooting War.
It was a big production.


USS The Sullivans

SOMEBODY does not want people to forget the fact that they have been lied to in the past to get a war expanded. SOMEBODY seems to be making an editorial about yesterday's claim of hostile Iranian boats picking a fight with the US Navy.

There are patriots in all fields. There are public servants who truly serve the public. May their tribe prosper and grow!

Since so many youngsters are not getting real history education, and so many of them are likely to become cannon fodder with expanded war, the lesson of history bears reteaching from time to time.

Die at home surrounded by your loved ones, not in some shit hole in a place nobody will remember.

that they never EVER have a war in a place with a really pleasant climate.

And then never avoid one in a bad climate.

Days later, 9/11 happened.

I recall Tonkin. Not quite old enough to actually Remember the Maine! but I heard tell of it from grandparents who remembered the jingo.

Over and over and over.

Right-wing reactionaries trying to keep the heathen Buddhists and Communists from taking over the country.

i never thought there was....

And they would have to show me more than some grainy video. Figure cheney is editing the new Osama video claiming credit for the 'Iranian provocation'. Dick's been pretty quiet since the fire.

Don't trust the films, the theme song, or the Burger King tie-in.

Show me a president, and I'll show you a liar and a thief.

I lived in Missourah for 'bout a year, during Clinton I... I learned to question most, though not everything (religion is still a big thing there).

The Gulf of Tonkin is embedded with the war in Indonesia too. The Dutch aided the CIA in the Gulf, in exchange for help getting rid of the democratic president of Indonesia, Soekarno.

Ten years later, the Dutch Foreign Ministry repays the debt, by letting A.Q. Khan on the loose, at their explicit request. Nice going...

Surely there was a film made,why can't we see it?

Chalabi's gang is probably willing to jump in boats and make farting noises for a price. AND they work both sides.

and we are barely doing that.

"If we choose we can live in a world of comforting illusion."
-Noam Chomsky

Was it just a case of provoking the N Vietnamese to send out torpedo boats, but not firing?

Is there some kind of transcript?


http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/maddox1.htm

And why isn't this sort of thing all over the media? Why do we have so many journalists still afraid to call this administration on its lies?

This is getting absurd. Control of the airwaves was LEASED to these fatcats contingent upon their providing some modicum of public service. Maybe it is time to break up some of these media monopolies.

you can bet the media would be screaming about the 'Iranian attack on the US Navy'. It'd be 'What election?' and 'Obama who?'.

Lucky for us, most in the Navy are not as quick to jump on the bandwagon like the fundies in the brass of the Air Force. Give me cooler heads at see over hotdogs at 45,000 feet any day of the week.

Will media point out the truth of the report on the lies of Vietnam? Look to the fact that this came from a French news source. If you want US media to carry the INTEL report on 'Nam, you gotta rattle a shit load of cages to get some attention.

One hopes KO's staff is on it. Has anyone emailed to Keith?

Media won't cover it unless WE make them by doing an end run. Then, they report or make themselves obsolete, once again.

I half agree.

Though I think the MSM ignores a lot of KO's "Scoops" even after it is clear that the story is solid. So still the public is denied information by pinheads like Blitzer.

fcc just voted to let them get even worse

I thought that they would take congress seriously when our representatives, left and right, mostly said "no."

Damn Bushite-corporatists.

ship that was attacked....This story comes from an unnamed author but yet there are those that are quick to judge LBJ..So why now why after nearly 44 years later does this get reported..This wasn't just declassified yesterday.....This is why the MSM and media sources period are so successful spreading BS......Now I'm not saying its not true I'm saying I dont believe it because it just looks too obvious of an attempt to discredit the LBJ administration...

It is a wake up call/reminder to the American people that their 'leaders' are not the most honest blokes around. And that those who profit from war are willing to lie to create wars.

quite a bit of difference.

... so long that it has been forgotten, once again.

and then if some local BOATS come near we scream about them threatening US!!" Now to hear that the Tonkin incident and probably all of the rest of it was a fake, just reinforces my feelings that we have been faked into this stupid middle east war.. I do not believe in the Al Qaeda stuff. How do we know they are not just training to be militia men in their own countries????

...provocation.

We cruised in their territorial waters for years after the McWar started including going into the waters between the mainland and off shore islands near Hai Phong and then lied to the electorate about everything we were doing including even the day and night bombing of the densely populated areas of North Viet Nam. They had little defense against us with outdated, outclassed MIG17s and old PT boats whose torpedos didn't come very close to destroyers cruising with us which they were trying to attack. I can hardly imagine a battle group of Iranian ships cruising off of our coast not being harrassed at the very least.

There were no anti ship missiles then unlike today when we might expect our fleet off Iran to suffer heavy damage if we do attack.

We almost duked it out with Russia for less than what US has been doing to Iran for years. I have found Iranian restraint most commendable.

Even though I think they do not have as great a weapons disadvantage as Vietnam had we still have half of all the world's military weaponry at...least by cost, which leads to another story.

I am not a big fan of fanatic religious militants but Iran has a right to it's own place on the planet and the oil under it.

We seem to hold the title for crazy at present

in the Nixon White House" and one of the most interesting things about Kissinger (other than how incredibly evil he is) is his history. Here, from p26:

Of the men closest to the President-elect in December 1968, Kissinger was the most experienced in national security affairs. He had been a consultant to the NSC under Kennedy, and was far from a newcomer to covert intelligence operations. He had served in the Army Counterintelligence Corps at the close of World War II and stayed on active duty in occupied West Germany after the war. He was eventually assigned to the 970th CIC Detachment, whose functions included support for the recruitment of ex-Nazi intelligence officers for anti-Soviet operations inside the Soviet bloc. * After entering Harvard as an undergraduate in 1947, at age twenty-four, he retained his ties, as a reserve officer, to military intelligence. By 1950, he was a graduate student and was working part time for the Defense Department--one of the first at Harvard to begin regular shuttles to Washington--as a consultant to its Operations Research Office. That unit, under the direct control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conducted highly classified studies on such topics as the utilization of former German operatives and Nazi partisan supporters in CIA clandestine activities. In 1952, Kissinger was named a consultant to the director of the Psychological Strategy Board, an operating arm of the National Security council for covert psychological and paramilitary operations. In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed Nelson Rockefeller his Special Assistant for Cold War Planning, a position that involved the monitoring and approval of convert CIA operations. These were the days of CIA successes in Iran, where the Shah was installed on the throne, and in Guatemala, where the government of Jacobo Arbenz, considered anti-American and antibusiness, was overthrown. In 1955, Kissinger, already known to insiders for his closeness to Rockefeller and Rockefeller's reliance on him, was named a consultant to the NSC's Operations Coordinating Board, which was then the highest policy-making board for implementing clandestine operations against foreign governments. <end>

He's quite a guy. At least by Seymour's account, you get the impression that Kissinger was running Nixon as well as the war. You know, you can vote for Nixon, but you never get a say on Kissinger. It seems to me that the Bushes and Kissingers of the world have long thought they know best, and we're just along for the ride, the tax base, and the air of legitimacy.

The interesting thing about then and now is that behind the hoaxes is Halliburton. Enriching itself off war. And some Democrats as well then. And some Republicans as well now. Republicrats all. Although perhaps the term should be Halliburtoncrats.

The answer to "what price war?" I suppose depends on what Halliburton is trading for on any particular day on Wall Street.

Impeachment is off the table. Which makes you wonder how much Halliburton has slipped under the table to keep impeachment off the table.

we might stand a better chance of avoiding.

Truth is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin Affair -- Illusion and Reality
by Joseph C Goulden
http://www.amazon.com/Truth-first-casualty-illusion-reality/dp/B0006C04GW/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199892562&sr=8-5

"It was a damned big one, right on us. No doubt about this one,", he says. "About 1,500 yards off to the side, a nice, fat blip." Park asks for the "firing key" -- that is, for control of the triggering device on the five-inch gun mounts -- and for permission to fire. "Open fire!" is the response.

"Just before I pulled the trigger I suddenly realized, That's the Turner Joy. This came right with the order to open fire. I shouted back, 'Where is the Turner Joy?' There was a lot of yelling of 'Goddamn' back and forth, with the bridge telling me to 'fire before we lose the contact,' and me yelling right back at them. (I really wasn't thinking about what I was saying.)

"I finally told them, 'I'm not opening fire until I know where the Turner Joy is.' The bridge got on the phone and said, 'Turn on your lights, Turner Joy.'

"Sure enough, there she was, right in the cross hairs. I had six five-inch guns right at the Turner Joy, 1,500 yards away. If I had fired, it would have blown it clean out of the water. In fact, I could have been shot for not squeezing the trigger."

Here you can actually find the report:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2008/01/nsa_releases_history_of_americ.html