9781422278994

VIETNAM WAR

Chapter One THE GULF OF TONKIN INCIDENT

O n July 27, 1964 the Johnson administration ordered the dispatch to South Vietnam of another 5,000 military advisers , so raising the total to 21,000. Shortly after this there occurred the “Gulf of Tonkin incident,” which took the form of two “attacks” by North Vietnamese naval forces on a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers, the Maddox on August 2 and the Turner Joy two days later, steaming in international waters within the Gulf of Tonkin. Later findings, including a National Security Agency report, released in 2005, strongly suggests that the second attack did not in fact take place, as had long been believed, but also attempted to refute the equally long-standing belief that

Words to Understand Adviser: Someone who gives a recommendation about what should carried out. Ally: A state associated with another by a treaty or agreement. Buddhist: A follower of an eastern and central Asian religion.

members of the Johnson administration had knowingly lied about the incident. At the time, the Gulf of Tonkin incident persuaded the U.S. Congress to pass the South-East

Asia Resolution (“Gulf of Tonkin Resolution”) giving the president the authority to assist any country of South-East Asia threatened by “Communist aggression.” The resolution also gave President Johnson the legal right to increase the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict, all of which took place less than a year after Johnson had become president. It was the preceding Kennedy administration which had begun to dispatch military advisers to South Vietnam, and Kennedy himself had LEFT: North Vietnamese P-4 under fire from USS Maddox (August 2, 1964). OPPOSITE ABOVE: A Douglas A-1 aircraft of the USAF on active service in Vietnam, photographed from the cockpit of a U.S. warplane. A North Vietnamese Mikoyan-Guryevich jet-powered fighter breaks away to port. OPPOSITE BELOW: A member of a USAF Air Commando C-44 unit loads a battery of speakers onto the aircraft in preparation for a psychological warfare mission.

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