Truth Under Attack

Back in early August, 1964, Democratic Republic of Vietnam naval forces attacked the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. The first attack was on August 2nd against the USS Maddox, then August 4th against both vessels. President Lydon B. Johnson used the second attack to obtain approval from Congress for the Vietnam War.

The problem is, these two attacks never happened.

First came information in 2001, in the form of an audio tape recording by President Johnson himself, in which he admits that the second attack never happened. (This information was first revealed in Martin Fletcher’s article in the The Times, on Nov 7th, 2001.) Now, further information straight from the NSA shows us that none of the incident was real.

I bring this up, not only because it is fascinating news, but to put into perspective the current goals and “reactions” which will come from the Bush administration in their desire to attack Iran and Syria. The recent incident reported in the papers of our ships having a “close brush” with Iranian boats brings this issue to a head. I ask you to consider this simple question: Are you going to trust the government at face value when they say we were attacked?

This government has a long history of going to war under the pretext that we were innocent and attacked without provocation. From the sinking of the USS Maine by an explosion of unknown cause, which started the Spanish American war; through FDR’s goading of Japan and now argued topic of foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor; to the now proven faked attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. Why is it that we still trust the government when they claim we were attacked without provocation? It has a proven modus operandi which betrays any such trust!

It seems to me that the record of lying, on all areas of government behavior, would have produced a certain level of healthy skepticism in even the most ardent lapdog by now. It hasn’t. Instead the modus operandi of the American public is to trust the government’s take on every incident, the general assumption being that they would not mislead us.

They have misled us. They have misled us into sending our young men to the far corners of the world to die for fictional causes. It cannot all be swiped away with a gesture, claiming that it was an accident of circumstance or simple negligence or incompetence. We’ve been lied to and we are being lied to, all the time.

It seems to me that approaching anything the government claims with a heavy dose of skepticism, is the only sane course of response to have anymore. As difficult to swallow as it may be, it is long past the time to stop giving our own government the benefit of the doubt.