Ghost Of Tonkins Past

More of a postscript here instead of anything new, but still worth noting:

North Vietnamese made hoax calls to get the US military to bomb its own units during the Vietnam War, according to declassified information that also confirmed US officials faked an incident to escalate the war.

The report was released by the National Security Agency, responsible for much of the United States' codebreaking and eavesdropping work, in response to a "mandatory declassification" request, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) said Monday.

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.

Not open for debate: the last two major wars the U.S. has fought -- Vietnam and Iraq -- have been based at least partly on faulty, cherry-picked, or flat-out fabricated intelligence (not counting Desert Storm as a "major war"). If the Joint Chiefs had had their way in the early 1960's, there would have been another. An interesting way to convince developing nations that they don't need the ultimate deterrent.

Coincidentally, that report came just one day after last weekend's confrontation at sea between the U.S. and Iran. I don't think that incident was anything other than it appeared to be, and it's clear that a repeat of the USS Cole is a real danger. But watch the video here if you haven't seen it yet. I don't think it's a stretch to say that environment offers abundant opportunities to those who would like nothing better than to wake up the "sleepy American masses" to "the threat." If it comes to that, at least we can count on the public to keep its head, and the press to be sufficiently skeptical. Thank goodness.