Summary
(This article originally ran in The Daily Record, Baltimore, MD, another Dolan Media publication).
The night of August 4, 1964, was dark and drizzly over the Gulf of Tonkin, which lies between China and North Vietnam. Two U.S. destroyers, the Turner Joy and the Maddox, were on patrol there that night. These waters were not familiar to the U.S. sailors. In particular, the radiomen aboard were totally unacquainted with a well-documented if never well-understood local meteorological condition known as Tonkin Spook. This manifests itself by radar readings of craft that are not there. These ghosts appear real and constant for brief periods of time, a minute or two, and then disappear, perhaps to reappear elsewhere in a short while.See the full content of this document
Extract
Commentary: The Big Picture - War Powers, War Lies: A Series
The military mission that had brought these mariners to share the Gulf with apparitions that night has never been reasonably explained, but it was likely primarily a matter of creating a provocation. Lyndon Johnson and his Administration had been looking for justification to expand the size of the U.S. military contingent in Vietnam, and to adopt an explicitly offensive role toward North Vietnam, since at least June.
This search for a rationale sprang from the stark realization that, public declarations of confidence notwithstanding, the South Vietnamese government and military were not so slowly collap...See the full content of this document
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