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Prisoner#1 said:
what I do know is that there was no need for a 'false flag' incident to get
us involved in viet nam since we were already there in an advisory capacity
in the 50's and in country fighting a few years before the gulf of tonkin

why stage something to get something started that was already started

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Cervantes said:
Seems to me the engagement was exaggerated. Was it intentional? I have no clue. It is plausible.

Still, evidence leads me to suspect there was a military engagement of some kind.

People who 'know' it was a false flag have no proof.

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johnm214 said:

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Prisoner#1 said:
what I do know is that there was no need for a 'false flag' incident to get
us involved in viet nam since we were already there in an advisory capacity
in the 50's and in country fighting a few years before the gulf of tonkin

why stage something to get something started that was already started

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To justify the escalation of our involvement.  When you start drafting combat troops its a bit harder to keep public and congressional support than when your sending military advisors and local base security forces.

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Cervantes said:
I am astounded at how few conspiracy theorists have joined this thread.

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dynomite said:

how did we start (get involved in) those wars again?

vietnam- false flag attack on a U.S. ship.  see gulf of tonkin

gulf war- completely made up story of babies being taken from incubators and left to die on a cold floor, complete with a crying ambassadors daughter for effect

maybe you should read up on your history


edit: poorly worded

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Visionary Tools said:
Apart from the offical conspiracy theroy (jet fuel+office gubbins makes steel melt "duh pancake theroy") being wrong, why do the details of how the towers getting blown up matter?

In other false flag attacks that have been done (Reichstag fire, Gulf of Tonkin, USS Liberty) I don't think the mechanics of the false flag is as important as the repurcussions of each event. Fortunatly with the USS Liberty it didn't result in America attacking Egypt on behalf of Israel that did attack the unarmed communications ship (if that's not a blatant act of war, nothing is) but the other two gave their respective governments an excuse to start wars.

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communeart said:

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Wow I thought I saw it all: no planers, laser ray destruction of WTC adepts etc. So now it's time for conspiracy about them. They are just government puppets to discredit the real honest 9\11 truth tinfoil brigade.

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... haven't you ever heard of false flag operations? what about the british wearing arab clothes in iraq? gulf of tonkin?

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Prisoner#1 said:

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johnm214 said:
To justify the escalation of our involvement.  When you start drafting combat troops its a bit harder to keep public and congressional support than when your sending military advisors and local base security forces.

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we were already there as a military force in 1961, we were escalating our
involvement in '62 and '63 and even up until the draft which wasnt started
until 1969

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Cervantes said:
I am astounded at how few conspiracy theorists have joined this thread.

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In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4, 1964 incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence errors.[38]

Hanyok's conclusions were initially published within the NSA in the Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition of Cryptologic Quarterly, about five years before they were revealed in the Times article. According to intelligence officials, the view of government historians that the report should become public was rebuffed by policymakers concerned that comparisons might be made to intelligence used to justify the Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom) that commenced in 2003.[39] Reviewing the NSA's archives, Mr. Hanyok concluded that the NSA had initially misinterpreted North Vietnamese intercepts, believing there was an attack on August 4. Midlevel NSA officials almost immediately discovered the error, he concluded, but covered it up by altering documents, so as to make it appear the second attack had happened.

On November 30, 2005, the NSA released the first installment of previously classified information regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident, including a moderately sanitized version of Mr. Hanyok's article, "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2–4 August 1964" Cryptologic Quarterly, Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition, Vol. 19, No. 4 / Vol. 20, No. 1. The Hanyok article stated that intelligence information was presented to the Johnson administration "in such a manner as to preclude responsible decision makers in the Johnson administration from having the complete and objective narrative of events." Instead, "only information that supported the claim that the communists had attacked the two destroyers was given to Johnson administration officials."[8]

With regard to why this happened, Hanyok wrote:

    As much as anything else, it was an awareness that President Johnson would brook no uncertainty that could undermine his position. Faced with this attitude, Ray Cline was quoted as saying "... we knew it was bum dope that we were getting from Seventh Fleet, but we were told only to give facts with no elaboration on the nature of the evidence. Everyone knew how volatile LBJ was. He did not like to deal with uncertainties."[40]

Hanyok included his study of Tonkin Gulf as one chapter of an overall history of the involvement of NSA, and American signals intelligence (SIGINT), in the Indochina Wars. A moderately sanitized version of the overall history[41] was released in January 2008 by the National Security Agency and published by the Federation of American Scientists.[42]

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Using this evidence, Hanyok argues that the SIGINT confirms that North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, on August 2, 1964, although under questionable circumstances. The SIGINT also shows, according to Hanyok, that a second attack, on August 4, 1964, by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on U.S. ships, did not occur despite claims to the contrary by the Johnson administration. President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara treated Agency SIGINT reports as vital evidence of a second attack and used this claim to support retaliatory air strikes and to buttress the administration's request for a Congressional resolution that would give the White House freedom of action in Vietnam.

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