Vietnam War
| Date | December 1956 - 30 April 1975 |
|---|---|
| Location | Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand |
| Interest of | Max Boot, Thomas Anthony Dooley III, Task Force Alpha |
| Subpage | •Vietnam War/My Lai Massacre |
The Vietnam War was a proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from December 1956 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. Millions of people, mostly Vietnamese, lost their lives.
Contents
Official Narrative
The stated aims of the US government were the prevention of a communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of their wider strategy of Cold War doctrine of "containment", which aimed to stop the spread of communism. The fear was of the "domino theory", expressed by Dwight D. Eisenhower during an April 7, 1954 news conference:
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.[1]
Gulf Of Tonkin
- Full article: Gulf Of Tonkin
- Full article: Gulf Of Tonkin
As a prelude to the escalation of the conflict by the US, an "incident" was reported in the Gulf Of Tonkin, on the 2nd and then 4th of August, 1964. This was used as a justification for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which began the rapid escalation of the Vietnam war by authorising the use of "conventional" US military forces in South Ease Asia without the inconvenience of a formal declaration of war.
Long suspected of being a False Flag attack, light was shed on the Gulf Of Tonkin incident by the 2005 declassification of an internal National Security Agency historical study on the matter which concluded[2] that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese Naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated regarding August 2:
At 1500G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, the Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first.[2]
Regarding August 4, the NSA report concluded that:
It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.[3]
On November 30, 2005, the NSA released the first installment of previously classified information regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident, including a moderately sanitized version of Mr. Hanyok's article.[2] The Hanyok article stated that intelligence information was presented to the Johnson administration "in such a manner as to preclude responsible decision makers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective narrative of events." Instead, "only information that supported the claim that the communists had attacked the two destroyers was given to Johnson administration officials."[4]
Related Quotations
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| MLK | “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government.” | MLK | 9 November 1967 |
| Anthony Poshepny | “"I used to collect ears... I had a big, green, reinforced cellophane bag as you walked up my steps. I'd tell my people to put them in, and then I'd staple them to this 5,000 kip (Lao currency) notice that this ear was paid for already, and put them in the bag and send them to Vientiane with the report.. I still collected them, until one day I went out on an inspection trip... and I saw this little Lao kid out there, he's only about 12, and he had no ears. And I asked: `'What the hell happened to this guy?' Somebody said, 'Tony, he heard you were paying for ears. His daddy cut his ears off. For the 5,000 kip' .” | Anthony Poshepny | 2003 |
| Vladimir Putin | “Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of bringing democracy they suppressed and exploited, and instead of giving freedom they enslaved and oppressed. The unipolar world is inherently anti-democratic and unfree; it is false and hypocritical through and through.
The United States is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. And they created a precedent. Recall that during WWII the United States and Britain reduced Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities to rubble, without the least military necessity. It was done ostentatiously and, to repeat, without any military necessity. They had only one goal, as with the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities: to intimidate our country and the rest of the world. The United States left a deep scar in the memory of the people of Korea and Vietnam with their carpet bombings and use of napalm and chemical weapons. It actually continues to occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, which they cynically refer to as equals and allies. Look now, what kind of alliance is that? The whole world knows that the top officials in these countries are being spied on and that their offices and homes are bugged. It is a disgrace, a disgrace for those who do this and for those who, like slaves, silently and meekly swallow this arrogant behaviour. They call the orders and threats they make to their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity, and the creation of biological weapons and the use of human test subjects, including in Ukraine, noble medical research. It is their destructive policies, wars and plunder that have unleashed today’s massive wave of migrants. Millions of people endure hardships and humiliation or die by the thousands trying to reach Europe.” | Vladimir Putin | 2022 |
Witness
| Witness | Description |
|---|---|
| Dan Rather | US corporate journalist and former news anchor. He made his career by misrepresenting the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. While generally reliably staying within the Overton window of accepted opinions, he was set up and fired in 2004, presumably for showing insufficient patriotism after 911 by revealing the Abu Ghraib torture. |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:CIA Planned Coup | article | 2 September 1963 | Ngo Dinh Nhu | |
| Document:The US war in Vietnam 1961-75 | book extract | 13 February 2007 | Mark Curtis |
References
- ↑ http://www.nps.gov/features/eise/jrranger/quotes2.htm
- ↑ a b c Robert J. Hanyok, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964", Cryptologic Quarterly, Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition, Vol. 19, No. 4 / Vol. 20, No. 1.
- ↑ Hanyok article (page 177)
- ↑ Hanyok article (page 177)
