A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on
by pliant mass media...leading to over 50,000 American
deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.
The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo
boats launched an "unprovoked attack" against a
U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the
Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 -- and that North Vietnamese PT
boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on
a pair of U.S. ships two days later.
The truth was very different.
Rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2, the U.S.
destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive
intelligence-gathering maneuvers -- in sync with
coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South
Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force.
"The day before, two attacks on North Vietnam...had
taken place," writes scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Those
assaults were "part of a campaign of increasing
military pressure on the North that the United
States had been pursuing since early 1964."
On the night of Aug. 4, the Pentagon proclaimed that a
second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had occurred
earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf -- a report cited by
President Johnson as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous
escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam.
But Johnson ordered U.S. bombers to "retaliate"
for a North Vietnamese torpedo attack that never
happened.
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