Between August 2 and August 4, 1964, two American destroyers sailing in the territorial waters of North Vietnam came under fire from the North Vietnamese. In retaliation, Washington ordered to open fire. It was the start of hostilities, at least it was the official version of the American secret service at the time.
Falsified reports
For US President Lyndon Johnson, in the race for his re-election, these incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin are timely. What is presented as an aggression thus becomes the ideal pretext to launch the first raids on the Communist positions. A few days later, he will obtain full military powers from the US Congress. A determination that will earn him his re-election.
But later, the crews of both ships will deny this official account. In fact, at the end of the previous July, South Vietnamese speedboats – covered by the two American destroyers – deliberately attacked fishing boats and shelled two islands.
According to a 2005 public investigation by American historian Robert J. Hanyok, American intelligence officers deliberately falsified reports to make it appear that North Vietnamese ships were behind the attack on the destroyers. Their motivation would not have been political: they would have simply wanted to cover up errors, the NSA would indeed have misinterpreted the North Vietnamese communications, concluding in an attack.
SLIDESHOW – The Vietnam War in pictures
Les “Pentagon Papers”
After the Indochina War which saw France clash with its colonies (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), the Vietnam War saw North Vietnam oppose – in the middle of the Cold War -, supported by the communist bloc , and South Vietnam, an ally of the United States.
“It’s a war that is not just Vietnamese-American, explains to Geo the historian Pierre Journoud, professor of contemporary history at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier. It’s also a civil war, between Vietnamese. “
A war that has never really been declared. But from 1961, US President John F. Kennedy sent more than 15,000 military advisers – the “counterinsurgency” began. And it was from 1965, after the incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin, that the United States intervened massively.
It is now established that the incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin were instrumentalized to allow a military escalation. The “Pentagon Papers” – defense-secret documents emanating from the Department of Defense on the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War – will reveal in 1971 that the United States had already decided to expand and intensify the fighting and bombing even before the “incidents” occurred.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=TiwRVMExiNw%3Frel%3D0
A “dirty war”
In fifteen years of conflict, the Vietnam War – the longest of the 20th century – has claimed 685,000 lives, mostly civilians, among the Vietnamese population. Not to mention the wounded, victims of napalm and Agent Orange. And of the 536,000 American soldiers sent, nearly 60,000 died there.
A “dirty war” in which the Americans experimented with chemical weapons. Year after year, the conflict will get bogged down. The media coverage of the conflict – such as this famous photo from 1972 which shows a little Vietnamese girl fleeing, naked and burnt, a village on fire after a napalm bombardment – will partly help to tip public opinion.
Deadlocked and increasingly unpopular, the Paris peace accords in 1973 marked the American military withdrawal. The country will be reunified in 1976.
To read the previous episodes of the series, it’s here with the first one: Syndrome K, that bogus epidemic that saved Jews during WWII. The second: the false donation from Emperor Constantine. The third: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
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