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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug R who wrote (18890)	8/14/2004 1:02:25 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 173976

2, fair.org prisonplanet.com When former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara met the enemy's leading strategist Thursday, he raised a question he'd saved for 30 years: What really happened in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 4, 1964? "Absolutely nothing," replied retired Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. Both sides agree that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. Navy ship in the gulf on Aug. 2 as it cruised close to shore. But it was an alleged second attack two days later that led to the first U.S. bombing raid on the North and propelled America deep into war. Many U.S. historians have long believed the Johnson administration fabricated the second attack to win congressional support for widening the war. But for McNamara, Giap's word was the clincher. "It's a pretty damned good source," he said after the meeting. .......................................................... McNamara wasted little time in raising a question that clearly had nagged him for decades. "To this day I don't know what happened on August 2 and August 4, 1964, in the Tonkin Gulf," he said to Giap. "I think we may have made two serious misjudgments. ... Did what we thought was an attack on August 4, 1964, the so-called second attack -- did it occur?" Giap replied, "On the fourth of August, there was absolutely nothing." vi.uh.edu There were more OPLAN 34A raids on the night of August 3-4, this time shelling two points on the North Vietnamese mainland. The destroyers did not participate; the raids were carried out by the boats from Danang. Late on the afternoon of August 4, the two destroyers headed away from the North Vietnamese coast toward the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin. That night, they began picking up what appeared to be high-speed vessels on their radar. They believed they were being attacked, and opened fire. Most of the supposed attacking vessels, however, appeared only on the radar of the TURNER JOY, not the radar of the MADDOX. Some men on the destroyers decided later that what had appeared on the radar had just been ghost images; others think the radar images were genuine torpedo boats attacking them. This is often referred to as the "second attack." The following afternoon, aircraft from two US aircraft carriers, the TICONDEROGA and the CONSTELLATION, carried out retaliatory airstrikes. The targets for the most part were coastal patrol vessels of the North Vietnamese Navy, but a major petroleum storage facility at the town of Vinh was also hit, and in fact the destruction of this facility was the most important accomplishment of the airstrikes. On August 7, the US Congress passed, almost unanimously, the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution," giving President Johnson basically a blank check to use "all necessary measures" to deal with "aggression" in Vietnam. The Johnson administration had been wanting to get such a resolution from the Congress; the Tonkin Gulf incidents made a good excuse. It does not appear, however, that the incidents had been deliberately concocted in order to provide the excuse. members.fortunecity.com People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Nah, this time you plan to vote for a man who lied for 3 purple Heart's to get out of Mr. NcNamara's war early.