Today, Aug.7 is a bad day in history. On this day in 1964 Congress, at the President's request,passed a law known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
For those who are too young to know or those who don't remember Tonkin Gulf was an area off the south coast of Vietnam, and for some reason we had a carrier or two and a naval task force stationed there. One night it was claimed that a U S ship was fired on by a small boat or boats thought to be Vietnamese. So on this evidence or despite the lack of any evidence LBJ launched an invasion and major war on Vietnam.
As a point of interest, some years back at Oshkosh there was a pilot(can't recall his name) speaking about the night of the supposed "attacks". He was the one sent to fly over the fleet as recon. He did not see any hostile attacks and reported that fact to his superiors. Whether that report ever got back to LBJ, I don't know, but the war movement had found a catalyst and was off and running.
Some sources say that trigger happy U S ships fired at each other, or maybe the govt just invented the whole thing, I don't really know. But I am pretty sure we wouldn't invade Mexico or Canada on such an excuse, real or imagined.
The resolution to start this war passed the senate about 98 to 2, and that Wayne Morse of Oregon was one of the two who kept a sane head.
Morse was born in Wisconsin, near Madison, and started out as a Republican. He left that party in opposition to Nixon as vice president. Even back then he had a clear view as to Nixon, but was only one voice in the wind.
Once the snake was out of the cage, it became almost unstoppable and went on to be our longest war, with huge losses.
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Originally Posted by Bill Greenwood
