Replying to a message of Ross Cassell to Dave Drum:

 RC> Hello Dave!

 RC> 29 May 09 08:09, you wrote to me:

 RC>>> LBJ gave us Vietnam...

 DD>> No, he didn't -

 RC> He gave it to us as we know it.

 DD>> the Dulles brothers did that. Elby Jay just continued
 DD>> the ramp-up that JFK had begun as part of the commitment the US was
 DD>> obligated to under the Dulles Brother's SEATO agreements. Of course
 DD>> he denigrated the person with a real plan to prosecute the treaty
 DD>> obligations and get the hell out - in order to get elected ... and
 DD>> then did half-measures of what Barry proposed causing a quagmire
 DD>> from which this nation is still digging out.

 RC> Actually Truman and Eisenhower had their hands on sending over the
 RC> advisors.

Not Truman.  Harry left office in 1953, and he (and Eisenhower) specifically
refused French requests to help them (mostly with air power) in their Vietnam
fiasco, which ended in 1954.

Harry's blunder was his refusal to recognize Ho Chi Minh's functioning government
in Vietnam in 1945/46 because of deGaulle's objections.  Note that the US liasion
officers with Ho *all* recommended that the Allies recognize his government.  

If memory serves the first US advisors were sent to Vietnam in about 1958.

 RC> Kennedy sent even more..

 RC> LBJ sent in the troops and pulled the trigger.

The first large scale deployment of troops to Vietnam was in 1964.

 RC> and might I remind everyone, the Gulf Of Tonkin incident, suspicious
 RC> intelligence used to get Congress to give LBJ a blank cheque.

The Gulf of Tonkin 'incident' happened.  *Why* it happened was never publicized.
Seems that the South Vietnamese - with US support - had been conducting
night time harrassment operations along the *North* Vietnamese coast for some
time prior to that incident, and the Maddox and the Joy were both in the general
area that those operations had been staged from.

While the press was told that the incident occurred, they were *not* told that
the incident was a reaction to earlier US/South Vietnamese operations.

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