4, the Pentagon proclaimed that a second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had occurred earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf - a report cited by President Johnson as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam.īut Johnson ordered U.S. Those assaults were “part of a campaign of increasing military pressure on the North that the United States had been pursuing since early 1964.” “The day before, two attacks on North Vietnam…had taken place,” writes scholar Daniel C. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers - in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. Rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2 - and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a “deliberate attack” on a pair of U.S. destroyer on “routine patrol” in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug.

The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an “unprovoked attack” against a U.S. That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.”īut there was no “second attack” by North Vietnam - no “renewed attacks against American destroyers.” By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.Ī pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media…leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties. “American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers Move Taken to Halt New Aggression”, announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

Us navy pow's from vietnam war