The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: You must hear this...NPR today.

[lottie244]

NPR.org. For those of you who were just children at the start of the Viet Nam war, you must here this program that features Walter Cronkite and the history we dare not mention. History does repeat, and repeat, and repeat. Our government misled us then and misled us about Iraq...and is still misleading us. This program is a must. Unbelievable tapes between Johnson and McNamara. I couldn't believe my lying ears.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. The damn thing was passed on my 15th birthday.

Thoroughly pissed me off.

[trof]

2. Read Daniel Ellsberg's "Secrets".

Blew my mind.
I'm a 63 year old vet who will never, ever, feel the same way about "my" country again.

[Grover Cleveland]

3. At least McNamara apologized

think Rummy would ever do that.

[PragMantisT]

4. I caught that show

it was very good.

especially the candid tapes of LBJ's conversations.

[nosmokes]

5. i always thought *they* can never do this to us again.

and yet here we are in iraq, and nixon and his lies ain't got nuthin' on this cat that sits in that oval office now. hell, lil flora makes tricky dick look like a piker.

[Bush was AWOL]

6. I listened on my way home from work

it was very interesting. I still don't understand why LBJ wanted in so bad.

[AbbeyRoad]

7. I too was impressed by this NPR piece this afternoon

I agree that people of my age or younger should definitely listen to this story.

I was born in 1975, the year the Vietnam war officially ended. I have to admit that I am deficient in a lot of the historical details of the Vietnam war. It wasn't covered in any depth in the history classes I have taken. What I know about the war, I have pieced together on my own through some of my mother's memories, reading, documentaries, and movies.

Listening to the Walter Cronkite story about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, I was struck by how obviously history does repeat, or more specifically, how a predictable human thought process influenced by concentrated power repeats. I often wonder how it is possible that people forget, if they in fact do, and miss the signs of similar historical circumstances. I mean, why aren't there more skeptics?

[Green Lantern]

8. Sorry to say

I missed the program. Did they actually admit the phony messages from the Maddox and Turner Joy??

Is there a link to the program available?

[AbbeyRoad]

9. Here's the link where you can listen to the story

http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_3810724.html?place=home01

[Green Lantern]

13. thank you

I bookmarked it and will read it tomorrow.

[Cleita]

10. I have posted this more than once in the past about the Gulf

of Tonkin resolution, but the words of an old woman who remembers this means nothing unless there is someone with more credibility to say it. Our media is sorely lacking.

[gauguin57]

11. Walter Cronkite's extended pieces on "All Things Considered"

are always absolutely wonderful. He's got the old tapes of himself interviewing world leaders that he can insert into his reports. For D-Day, he played an old interview with Eisenhower.

As Walter interviews Johnson at the LBJ Ranch after the president's retirement, LBJ keeps insisting he was right to do what he did, even though we now know there was no second attack in the Tonkin Gulf -- the resolution was built on smoke and mirrors. Just as Bush kept insisting today that he would have still gone into Iraq, even knowing acknowledging the faulty intelligence.

The way Walter frames the story -- repeating the phrase "faulty intelligence," you just know he's making a point about the present mess, without coming out and saying it!!!!

For those who haven't seen "Fog of War," you really must. It will give you so much to think about, your head will explode!

[AbbeyRoad]

14. I still need to see "Fog of War"

Cronkite's pieces on NPR are extremely well put together. It's refreshing to hear from a real journalist every now and then.

This part with a minor modification could be applicable today as well:

"'Communist aggression' was a phrase most of us were conditioned to react to. If the President said there was an emergency, we took him at his word."

[lottie244]

12. Sen. Morse = Sen Byrd: I can't get over the similarities or the events

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=gulf+of+tonkin+resolution+dissent&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3D14fd0405da1b9ca9%26clickedItemRank%3D3%26userQuery%3Dgulf%2Bof%2Btonkin%2Bresolution%2Bdissent%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.jfklibrary.org%252Fpica_essay_winner_2003.html%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPIndex2%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jfklibrary.org%2Fpica_essay_winner_2003.html

Read this. Tell me history doesn't repeat. Men keep lying.

[DemoTex]

15. They lied. 58,235 women and men died.

My youth was robbed from me. As any Viet-vet on this board will probably tell you, nothing has been the same since Vietnam. For any of us. It is/was the defining point in our young lives. Vietnam was too unbelievable and surrealistic to even describe. Vietnam was the ultimate bad trip in the ultimate beautiful country. Vietnam robbed us of our youth. Argue that, Chickenhawks!

[burrowowl]

18. And at least 3,000,000

Vietnamese and untold destruction of the enviroment (Valley of the Moon) and Vietnamese (birth defects from war) and GI's still dying (agent orange, land mines, unexploded ordenance (we dropped more bombs in the area than both theatres of WWII combined)).
The U$ is still at it. Encourage people to read A Peoples' History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

[wuushew]

16. Why were the destroyers only 8 miles off the coast?

This country doesn't tolerate warships in its waters, especially if they were conducting these so called 34A excercises.

[lottie244]

17. Trying to get the N.Vietnamese to shoot at them to justify attacking them

Listened to Franks tonight on Nightline. Glorifying our invasion of Iraq when they didn't even fight back that much. We bombed the hell out of the Iraqi people and then walked in to Iraq with not much resistence. We are now fighting the Iraqi military that didn't fight us when we invaded. I remember Saddam's words that seem prophetic now: "You will see you soldiers bleeding in Iraqi streets." or something close to that.

We never learn. You just can't fight people in countries like this when they are protecting their own country. That's why we never had to worry about Iraq or any other nation actually invading us...so that bullshit about fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here is total crap. They never intend to actually "fight" us here. They may attack us here, but there will be no fight.

[lottie244]

19. I'm kicking this for those who missed it yesterday. Very timely for now

Please link and listen. Walter Cronkite is great.