Thursday, January 10, 2008

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.

11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Put another way, there is not a single American military intervention since 1953 that wasn't based on lies. That covers **every** American military adventure in my lifetime.

The Department of "Defense" does what again, exactly?
-- sglover

1/10/2008 10:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Funny you should "go there". Another "Gulf of Tonkin Moment" in the NYTimes this morning.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/degrees-of-confidence-on-us-iran-naval-incident/

1/10/2008 11:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i think that that the Iranian video released today would hopefully put healthy skepticism of US military news releases -- not i'm willing to reject the proposition that the Iranians MIGHT want to make the US look like the bad guy by being provocative -- but no one can question that they have far more to lose by igniting a confrontation... that said i have no doubt in my mind that the navy's release sounds to my layman (bilingual) ears as a sheer fabrication and not only that but like a 45rpm record being played at 33... someone in the propaganda dept is bad at faking even an accented voice

1/10/2008 11:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know why the Iranians would want to do that again. I seem to recall a kind of cat and mouse game we used to play with Iranian gunboats in the gulf back in the 80s. We both kind of stopped that after one of our gungho Captains chased them into their waters...than when a blip came up on their radar signaling a plane was in the area...they pooped their pants and shot it down. Wound up being a civilian airliner...killed over 200 people if I remember right. Of course we pinned medals on everyones' chest...And Bush Sr. said he would never appoligize for America...About the only thing I could give us credit for is I believe that was that particular Captains last sea going command ...inspite of the medal.

1/10/2008 11:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Surprise! They made it up:

From ABC:


Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."

The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited

1/10/2008 2:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

goldhorder, maybe that's where Poppy's boy picked up the idea of giving medals to fuckups.

1/10/2008 5:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

2 Presidents from Texas:
LBJ and GWB
Both with close ties to:
Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root
Both with disputed elections:
LBJ for Senate and GWB 2000.
Both with major attacks propelling them forward:
LBJ:JFK
GWB:911
Both with corrupt wars...

1/10/2008 10:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't think you need to leave out the Gulf War. Don't forget the little girl testifying to Congress about Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators. Turns out she was the Ambassador's daughter, and there were no incubators. There is public deception in every war.

Since we have established that such deception is commonplace (it seems, the rule not the exception) I think it important to look at the events of Sept. 11th in that context as well. That those attacks were orchestrated by elements of our government seems more likely all the time. Beyond the pale? More like par for the course.

1/11/2008 10:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We can count on the press to be skeptical?!?!?!?!?! What have you been drinking lately? We can count on the press to tell us whatever Bushco wants us to think is more like it.

1/12/2008 3:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/attaturk/1526183655342673834/?src=hsn#479532

"i hope the rest of the world is watching, because someone needs to be piping real news in to us over the borders.

That reminds me of a funny/sad story.

I am an American ex-pat who's lived in Canada ever since 1970, when I refused to go to Vietnam.

When the Iraq invasion happened in March/April 2003, my sister, who is also in her 50's, finally decided she'd had enough and came up to Vancouver for a visit in order to investigate the possibility of moving her family to Canada, too.

She was amazed, upon watching Canadian TV news, to see actual live Democratic politicians, voicing their opposition to the war!

Opposition to the war cheerleading had been so totally blanked out by the US corporate media that my sister, who is a fellow political junkie, was amazed to see that there were ANY Dems who were against the war and actively speaking out about it... because she could only witness them doing this on Canadian television!

Amazing but true... reminds me of the deliberate TV freeze lately encountered by my favourite candidate, the lamented Dennis Kucinich.

The US TV networks are so fucking corrupt, it's like a banana republic."

1/28/2008 10:49 AM  
Anonymous Viagra Online said...

We need more troops, we need more mens, and more guns. We need more soldiers without fear like Vietnam war. I think we need more intelligence too. I think we're doing a great job out there, but isn't enough to becomes a real Universal power.

1/18/2011 10:20 AM  

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