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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ForYourEyesOnly who wrote (6929)	2/10/2003 7:39:40 AM
From: Crimson Ghost	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

Warmonger lies; yesterday and today Shooting at whales? What Really Happened in the Gulf of Tonkin by Mike Rogers "For all I know, our Navy could have been shooting at whales out there." This is what President Lyndon Baines Johnson said about the Gulf of Tonkin incident in later years. In 1964 America was drawn into war in Vietnam because of an incident that did not occur, despite what many Americans believed at the time. Before August of 1964 there was no war in Vietnam involving U.S. combat troops. Government officials were concerned about the hostilities between North and South Vietnam. They were also concerned that a communist victory in Vietnam would validate the Domino Theory. American ships had been on what were claimed to be intelligence gathering missions in the waters of Vietnam for months. But, "Vietnam barely registered in the American consciousness... What made the difference was the 'incident' in the Tonkin Gulf between North Vietnamese and the U.S. Navy (Prados 48)." President Johnson used an incident that never happened as an excuse to start the most unpopular war in American history. The sun was just beginning to set on August 4th, 1964 when United States destroyers received warning that North Vietnamese gunboats were preparing for combat. Two days earlier North Vietnamese PT boats had attacked the destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. The destroyers, Maddox and Turner Joy had reason to suspect that the Vietnamese would try again. They were not disappointed. At 9:40 P.M. the Maddox locked on to a radar contact and immediately asked for air support from the nearby aircraft carrier Ticonderoga. Both the Turner Joy and the Maddox opened fire on the target. Minutes later sonarmen reported torpedoes in the water. Both ships made sharp turns to evade the torpedoes. Suddenly sonarmen reported six torpedoes in the water. None of the torpedoes hit either ship. At 10:25 P.M. another ship was spotted by the Turner Joy's radar. Once again both ships opened fire. Soon after, the captain of the Turner Joy saw, "...a column of black smoke rising from the water." But once the destroyer investigated the area where the ship was supposedly sunk, nothing was found. Meanwhile, planes from the Ticonderoga saw no enemy aircraft. A pilot of an A-4 attack plane said, "The destroyers were calling out where they thought the torpedo boats were but could never find the damn torpedo boats." Two hours after the "attack" started, the captains of both destroyers began to wonder what they had been shooting at. They did not believe that the reported 26 torpedoes had actually been fired. North Vietnamese PT boats carried only two torpedoes each. Since only two boats were "sighted" it was impossible that 26 torpedoes could have been fired at the ships. Only the Maddox had reported the torpedo contacts. The Turner Joy never detected any torpedoes. The captains hypothesized that the torpedo sightings were false. The captains realized that, while performing high speed turns during the "battle", the Maddox's sonarman was hearing the reflections of thesonar beam on the Maddox's rudder, not detecting torpedoes. Early on August 5th the captain of the Maddox sent a message to Washington. It read: "Review of action makes any reported contactsand torpedoes fired appear doubtful... Suggest complete evaluation before any further action taken." Johnson did not listen. Johnson and his advisors never investigated the incident. The Vietnam war started because Johnson failed to examine the incident; he assumed that the North Vietnamese had attacked the destroyers. He used the incident to recommend a resolution allowing him to start a war in Vietnam. Three days later the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed allowing Johnson to, "take all necessary measures," to halt North Vietnamese aggression. This act led to the beginning of the most unpopular war in American history and will never be forgotten. The resolution should never have been passed because the Gulf of Tonkin Incident never happened. Because of the failure of the government to investigate further, 58,000 Americans lost their lives. In later years, after being released from a POW camp, former air squadron Commander James Stockdale summarized the Gulf Of Tonkin Incident: "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were shooting at phantom targets - there were no PT boats out there... There was nothing there but black water and American firepower." ------------------------------------------------------------------------