Iran showdown has echoes of faked Tonkin attack

Iran showdown has echoes of faked Tonkin attack
Nick Juliano
Published: Friday January 11, 2008

A dramatic showdown at sea. Crossed communication signals. Apparently-hostile craft nearby. Sketchy intelligence leading to ratcheted up rhetoric.

The similarities between this week's confrontation between US warships and Iranian speedboats and events off the coast of North Vietnam 44 years ago were too hard for many experts to miss, leading to the question: Is the Strait of Hormuz 2008's Gulf of Tonkin?

On Aug. 2nd and 4th, 1964, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, patrolling off the North Vietnamese coast, intercepted signals indicating they were under attack. Within days, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which paved the way to the escalation of the Vietnam War. However, as some intelligence agents suspected at the time, the Aug. 2nd attack took place after the USS Maddox fired first, according to a National Security Agency report released in 1995.

This week another NSA report surfaced, confirming suspicions that the Aug. 4th attack never happened.

The researcher who uncovered the most recent NSA assessment tells RAW STORY that the Strait of Hormuz confrontation, and the immediate saber-rattling from the Bush administration and its allies, demonstrates the extent to which officials must be wary about politicizing shaky intelligence in times of war.


Rest of article at: http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Echoes_of_Tonkin_seen_in_averted_0111.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7182637.stm
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The admission by the US Navy that Iranian speedboats might not have been the source of an apparent threat to attack American ships in the Gulf is a significant move that raises new fears about the chances of unintended clashes in the region.

It has worrying similarities with the incident in 1988 when, in the same Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, having failed to monitor the radio traffic properly.

The crew of the Vincennes became wrongly convinced that the airliner, an Airbus with 290 people on board, all of whom died, was an Iranian fighter jet.

The Iranian government said that the destruction of the plane was done in full knowledge of what it was.
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It's really convenient that many people forget the shooting down of that commercial airline.

This bullshit was to announce Bush's arrival in the ME. Pathetic!!

Add

it's best you follow the example and advice of the experts.

Hitler started World War II by invading Poland, but he first staged a phony Polish "attack" on a German radio station on the Polish/German border to provide some thin veneer of legitimacy to his action. (Much like the US used a non-existent Gulf of Tonkin attack on a US destroyer to justify pouring troops into Vietnam.)



And of course there's that famous Goering quote on how easy it is to get a war going by leaders who convince the people they are under attack.