Mulling over Bob Ackley to Steve Asher 14 Feb 2003

Hi Bob!

 SA> Iran, North Korea, Colombia and, perhaps, Cuba. It's important to 
 SA> remember that the US entry into the Vietnam War came about over the 
 SA> August, 1964 incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in which US, South 
 SA> Vietnamese and Laotian military forces deliberately provoked North 
 SA> Vietnamese patrol boats into a fight. That resulted in the ill-fated 
 SA> Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which, in the end, tore the US apart for 
 SA> decades to come. Commenting on that event, President Lyndon Johnson 
 SA> would say in 1965 that "for all I know, our Navy was shooting at 
 SA> whales out there."  

 BA>   Couple of points:
 BA>   (1) There were *no* Laotian military forces involved anyplace
 BA> other than Laos, where they were fighting North Vietnamese Army
 BA> regulars and had been since 1954. A little known factoid is that
 BA> North Vietnam maintained two regiments of its army
 BA> in northeastern Laos after the 1954 Geneva accords.

I don't have any personal recollection - I was still in primary school
in 1964, but google search suggests that the destroyer Maddox was
engaged in "aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers -- in sync
with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese
navy and the Laotian air force."

["30-Year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War", 
  by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon - July 27, 1994 
  www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html]

The author of the "Template" article might have made it clearer that
he was referring to the Laotian air force, if that was what he intended.

 BA>   (2) While the U.S. provided support for South Vietnamese commando
 BA> raids along the southern coast of North Vietnam through about
 BA> mid-1965, neither Maddox nor C. Turner Joy were involved - but
 BA> there's no way the North Vietnamese could have known that.
 BA>   (3) I seriously doubt that President Johnson made the above
 BA> statement *in 1965*.
 BA> The incident occurred in 1965 (late spring/early summer IIRC).  He
 BA> may have said it later.

A search on that expression results in many references to him saying
it in 1965, but without knowing who, if anyone, first heard him say
it, it is possible that it is just a myth.

 SA> In the prelude to the first Persian Gulf War in the early 1990's, 
 SA> Bush I's pretext - operations included lying to the American public 
 SA> about Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi Arabian border when, in fact, 
 SA> satellite photos would later show they were not. He also tried to 
 SA> convince the American public that Iraqi troops were invading 
 SA> hospitals and throwing infants out windows when, in fact, they  were
 SA> not. The US government has a long history of deception and  deceit
 SA> and it always is at the expense of the American people.  

 SA> Does any of this sound familiar? 

 BA> Yep.

It is much the same here - Australia's Prime Minister claimed to have
a letter from the Govt of South Vietnam requesting further military
assistance (April 1965), but the letter was never tabled, only an
acceptance of our "offer" in response to the (fictional?) request.

Cheers, Steve..

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