Do You Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Incident?
by James Glaser
January 9, 2008

From Wikipedia:

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is a pair of supposed attacks allegedly carried out by naval forces of North Vietnam. The incident occurred on august 2 and 4, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Although it is possible that the first attack, on the destroyer Maddox, was in fact carried out after the Maddox fired first, some altercation did occur. The second supposed attack almost certainly did not occur.

Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful.

In a tape recording that surfaced in 2001, President Lyndon B. Johnson admits that the Gulf of Tonkin second "attack," which he used to obtain approval for the Vietnam War from Congress, never occurred.

This from the New York Times January 8, 2008:

"President Bush said Tuesday that Iran's confrontation with the U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf was a "Provocative act."" "It's a dangerous situation," he said in a White House new conference. "They should not have done it, pure and simple... I don't know what their thinking was, but I'm telling you what my thinking was. I think it was a provocative act."

The "confrontation" that President Bush is talking about took place in the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is off the coast of Iran, much like the Gulf of Tonkin is off the coast of Vietnam.

Having a U.S. Navy Battle Group, 7,500 miles from home, floating off the Iranian coast could also be called a "provacative act."

If the Navy claims that Iran has attacked them, should we believe that that attack took place? What would we do if Iran actually had a navy and they parked that navy off our coast in International waters?

I looked it up, and Iran does have three destroyers. All of them are over 50 years old, and not sea-worthy. They do have some fast small patrol boats, and it is reported that they have 14,000 sailors and 2,000 marines.

Our navy has 335,000 sailors on active duty and 128,000 in the reserves. In aircraft carriers alone we have 12 ships, and each of them can carry out 150 strike missions a day, hitting over 700 targets. In all truth, Iran's navy is nothing compared to ours.

So, we have a couple of Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups sitting in the Middle East, making a show of our power, and we are upset because a few tiny Iranian patrol boats came to close to our ships.

We are playing "chicken" with Iran, and some day things might just get out of hand. Then George Bush and Dick Cheney will have an excuse to start their third war. Lyndon Johnson did the same thing, and even had the Navy lie about one attack and provoke the other. Over 58,000 Americans died because of that "incident." Also, over one million Vietnamese died, too.

If again the Navy makes the claim that they were attacked, Congress better take a close look before they make a rush to judgement Phoney navel actions can cost a lot of lives.

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