Word: tonkin
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...Taiwan and withdrawing from Vietnam? Or is this another P.R. type for next year's elections, diverting public attention away from Nixon's failure to stop the war? And if Nixon is serious, will the Pentagon go along or will they pull another U-2 or Gulf of Tonkin type adventure to force his hand...
CONCEALMENT AT TONKIN. The North Vietnamese PT-boat attacks on the U.S. destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 were among the most pivotal and controversial events of the war?and the Johnson Administration clearly deceived the public about them. U.S. officials claimed to be unaware that South Vietnamese naval units had been covertly operating in the area shortly before the Maddox was fired upon. McNamara was asked at a press conference on Aug. 5, 1964: "Have there been any incidents that you know
...Vietnamese?" His reply: "No, none that I know of." Yet the secret Pentagon study declares that "at midnight on July 30, South Vietnamese naval commandos under General Westmoreland's command staged an amphibious raid on the North Vietnamese islands of Hon Me and Hon Ngu in the Gulf of Tonkin. Apparently [the North Vietnamese boats that attacked the Maddox] had mistaken Maddox for a South Vietnamese escort vessel." The rapidity of U.S. air reprisals?within twelve hours of Washington's receipt of the news?argued that the U.S. had been positioned to strike as soon as attacked...
...AROUND. Throughout the papers, U.S. officials indicate that the various Saigon governments, the non-Communist Laotian Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, other U.S. allies and even the U.S. Congress were too often regarded as entities to be manipulated in order to accomplish U.S. foreign policy aims. Administration officials framed a Tonkin Gulf-style resolution long before the PT-boat attacks but failed to ask Congress for concurrence on what they were doing in Viet Nam. The State Department's Bundy writes of how Canada's J. Blair Seaborn, a member of the International Control Commission in Viet Nam, could be "revved...
...campaign against Barry Goldwater that "we seek no wider war." The documents leave no doubt that Johnson was being strongly urged by his subordinates to authorize such strikes on more than a tit-for-tat reprisal basis and that aircraft had been positioned to do so since before the Tonkin clash. Johnson flatly denies that he made such a decision before the election. Goldwater, who was sharply criticized for urging such attacks, claims he knew of the plans...