Vietnam

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A spy-agency analysis released Thursday contends a second attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, casting further doubt on the leading rationale for escalation of the Vietnam War.

Much as faulty U.S. intelligence preceded the invasion of Iraq, the mishandling of intercepted communications 40 years earlier is blamed in the National Security Agency paper for giving President Johnson carte blanche in the conflict.

The agency put out more than 140 long-secret documents in response to requests from researchers trying to get to the bottom of an episode that unfolded in the South China Sea on Aug. 4, 1964, and has been disputed since.

Among the documents is an article written by one of the agency's historians for its classified publication, Cryptologic Quarterly, declaring that his review of the complete intelligence shows beyond doubt "no attack happened that night."


E foi a guerra do Vietname, com a morte de pelo menos 500 000 soldados e outros tantos civis, e o alastramento secreto para o Cambodja e Laos, que acabou por permitir que os Khmers Vermelhos tenham deposto o regime monarquico no Cambodja (uma espécie de reediçao da deposição do Czar e a vitoria Leninista, por causa da Primeira Guerra, prolongada por insistência de Woodrow Wilson), com as consequências que se sabe. Depois, foram os proprios comunistas do Vietname a acabar com o genocidio de Pol-Pot.