From the NY Times of 31 Oct 2005 - or just another example of why responsible nations need a smoking gun to justify war:
Quote:
Doubts Cast on Vietnam Incident
The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian's work say.
The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash. ...
Mr. Hanyok's findings were published nearly five years ago in a classified in-house journal, and starting in 2002 he and other government historians argued that it should be made public. But their effort was rebuffed by higher-level agency policymakers, who by the next year were fearful that it might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, according to an intelligence official familiar with some internal discussions of the matter.
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Deja Vue? War justified by lies - therefore the US loses that war?
Well its been 30 years since Vietnam. I guess we can now tell Americans why the US was the enemy - the illegal aggressor - in Vietnam. No? They might realize that we are doing same in Iraq? Gasp. The truth might be just like Pentagon Papers. We better hide it for reasons of National Security.
Americans like their president when lied to. Americans cannot be trusted to learn about Vietnam until after "Mission Accomplished". Oh. We already declared Mission Accomplished - and then killed all those Iraqs and thousands of Americans. Then we torture people - because they are obviously evil - we are god's chosen people. Didn't god tell George Jr that? No problem; and I just saved money on Geico. Nobody cares about the truth. We can't be trusted with the truth.