CBS: Iraq-Viet War Coincidences Noted

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/07/world/main634595.shtml

A now-disputed account of a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin led President Lyndon B. Johnson to escalate America's involvement in Vietnam, a chain of events drawing comparisons on its 40th anniversary to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Johnson told Americans that communist torpedo boats fired on U.S. destroyers on Aug. 2 and Aug. 4, 1964. Following that, Congress voted almost unanimously on Aug. 7 to give Johnson approval to step up U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Some argue Johnson and Congress acted hastily based on limited or misleading information, launching America into a divisive war where some 58,000 Americans and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese troops and civilians died.

"The (Gulf of Tonkin) resolution was a blank check," said Tony Edmonds, a professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., and expert on Vietnam. "Certainly very similar to what happened with the congressional resolution on the Iraq war."

A year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, President Bush also received overwhelming support from Congress, in an October 2002 vote, to invade Iraq following now-discredited intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.