Pushing LBJ Into War: Robert S. McNamara and the Real Tonkin Gulf Deception

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/gareth-porter/57410/pushing-lbj-into-war-robert-s-mcnamara-and-the-real-tonkin-gulf-deception

Pushing LBJ Into War: Robert S. McNamara and the Real Tonkin Gulf Deception
Vietnam | War
by Gareth Porter | August 6, 2014 - 8:32am

For most of the last five decades, it has been assumed that the Tonkin Gulf incident was a deception by Lyndon Johnson to justify war in Vietnam. But the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam on August 4, 1964 in retaliation for an alleged naval attack that never happened — and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that followed was not a move by LBJ to get the American people to support a U.S. war in Vietnam.

The real deception on that day was that Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s misled LBJ by withholding from him the information that the U.S. commander in the Gulf who had initially reported an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. warships had now expressed serous doubts about the initial report and was calling for a full investigation by daylight. That withholding of information from LBJ represented a brazen move to usurp the president’s constitutional power of decision on the use of military force.

McNamara’s deception is documented in the declassified files on the Tonkin Gulf episode in the Lyndon Johnson library, which this writer used to piece together the untold story of the Tonkin Gulf episode in a 2005 book on the U.S. entry into war in Vietnam. It is a key element of a wider story of how the national security state, including both military and civilian officials, tried repeatedly to pressure LBJ to commit the United States to a wider war in Vietnam.

Johnson had refused to retaliate two days earlier for a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. naval vessels carrying out electronic surveillance operations. But he accepted McNamara’s recommendation for retaliatory strikes on August 4 based on reports of a second attack. But after that decision, the U.S. task force commander in the Gulf, Capt. John Herrick, began to send messages expressing doubt about that the initial reports and suggested a “complete evaluation” before any action was taken in response.

[PoliticAverse]

1. Like Nixon later, LBJ recorded his phone calls, you can read the transcripts of the calls

between him and McNamara (or play the audio) here: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/tapes.htm

[bemildred]

2. Yep. That's our government. Right there. nt