Johnson deceived Americans about attack on ship in Gulf of Tonkin....

[kentuck]

And oh, what a terrible web was woven by that deception. We are still paying the price even today. And George Bush Jr pulled a similar deception with his invasion of Iraq. It was very similar to the false Gulf of Tonkin incident. How long and how much will we have to pay for this latest deception. Will we never learn? Don't follow leaders that want war and have blood dripping off their chins. It is something we will pay dearly for.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. We paid more than 10 years for the Gulf of Tonkin...

...and 58,000 American lives and a couple million Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian.

To quote "Where Have all the Flowers Gone?"...

"When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?"

Edited to change wrong song title.

[gratuitous]

7. Actually, that's "Where Have All The Flowers Gone"

{Hangs head in shame for knowing that.}

[greatauntoftriplets]

8. Thanks.....

duh....

[gratuitous]

9. I knew you knew that

Being a "great" aunt and all.

[greatauntoftriplets]

10. Damn Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed on my 15th birthday.

I could see the handwriting on the wall.

What can I say re my memory lapse? Other than it is Friday.

[reprehensor]

2. Indeed. n/t

[Leprechan29]

3. Tonkin is not the same

It might have been a mistake, but it wasn't as blatanly spun as this war was. The main failing of Johnson was to not pull out once the incident was found to be false.

Edit: But nevertheless, it was a terrible web of deception and a completely wrong action taken, costing far too many American lives for a misunderstanding.

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a ploy to send American troops to VN.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0805-09.htm

[Blue_Roses]

4. from what I heard on the news Johnson had been in Saudi

Arabia for 10 years and was learning to speak Arabic because he was interested in the Muslim religion.

[Malva Zebrina]

6. It seems to me it is far worse than the GOT lie

First of all, this wannabee president was not really elected in the first place.

Second of all, he, our current usurper sitting in the WH, who is the commander in chief, and loves to call himself in his gradiose idea of his power, the "war president" in his own words and is AWOL himself, is actually lacking in intelligence and is quite stupid. He does not have the abilities that other presidents have had. He has from the beginning been the poster boy of his daddy and of his daddy's friend, Dick Cheney.

Bush knows this and is humiliated by it.

as stupid people usually are .

His compensation for this humiliation? The kick ass, tough guy bloviating and more stupid reactions we have come to recognize as his stupidity.

He never did and to this day does not know a damn thing about where this country needs to go and where it will go. He is simply the photo op president, playing the big gun guy who can and will "smoke the bad guys out, surround them in the OK corral and kill them all" and spouting platitudes that are handed to him on pieces of paper by Karen or any other of the Bush slaves.

He is really a fraud and a nothing and he knows it.

[AP]

11. Actually, it looks like he lied that there WASN'T an attack days earlier.

The Fog of War (the Errol Morris doc.) has a fascinating segment on this.

Apparently there was an attack on a US naval ship (confirmed by testing the metal in the shrapnel that hit the vessel) a couple days before the Tonkin incident.

The US was totally not expecting it. So they tried to pretend nothing happened.

I think what happened -- at least it's the impression you get from watching the documentary -- once they realized they were attacked, they needed to create a pretext to strike back, and had they said, "we were attacked three days ago and we didn't realize it until now" they would have looked like idiots. So they lied about a second attack and covered up the first.

Gotta love the government.