Cartoon #224: “Gulf of Tonkin”

A National Security Agency analysis of the Gulf of Tonkin incidents was declassified this week, four years after it was written in 2001. It proves conclusively that there was no attack on U.S. ships on August 4, 1964, as reported and leaked to the media. President Lyndon Johnson used the false reports of the alleged attack to justify escallating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Some of us did not have to wait for declassification. Here in Pflugerville, Texas, we needed only ask the comptroller of the school district, Gerrell Moore. Former NSA officer Moore was the senior intelligence official aboard the U.S.S. Maddox during the Tonkin Gulf incidents. He has told anyone who would listen from day one that the second attack never happened. He was even interviewed for decades about it by mainstream news organizations like Newsweek. Nobody ever published his statements.

Those of us who have been paying attention to modern U.S. history have long known that there is nothing new about the so-called “War on Terror,” and that the slippery slope toward neo-fascism (or corporatism if you prefer) did not start on 9/11.