Conspiracy Theory Becomes Conspiracy Fact - Move Along Citizen, Nothing To See Here...

We learn basic pieties in public school, and they are not to be questioned or debated.  Most of them are wrong.

One of the standard bearers of the Fact Free Parade that is High School History (oops - Social Studies) is the fact that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident caused the outbreak of the Vietnam War.  There have been rumblings from the beginning that it was a hoax, that there was no attack, but these voices have been shouted down - yelled at and called "conspiracy theorists", and not to be discussed in serious venues with serious people.

With the advent of the internet, it turns out that the Conspiracy Kooks were right after all.

The two 'events', on August 2nd 1964 and August 4th, 1964 were, and are by many, seen as the belligerent acts by North Vietnam that warranted an escalation of troops, and eventually a war.  The August 2nd event turns out to have been American boats firing first, initiating conflict.  The August 4th incident never happened - it was created out of whole cloth.  Looking back, we see the repeated pattern of an 'event' used to justify war - an event so flimsy that it is baffling in hindsight to see that people bought it.  Not everyone did, but those people were maligned by the establishment, at great cost to their careers.  58,000 American deaths, and possibly millions of Vietnamese deaths rest on a 'cause' that, in effect, never happened.

"It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2."

Before his death, Robert McNamara admitted that the event never happened.  Perhaps he had a guilty conscience, perhaps he needed closure.  What is more noteworthy, is that in the award winning documentary, Fog of War, he admitted as such.  The reaction?  There was no reaction.  This should have been front page headlines on every paper in the country.  What you should realize by now is that the Narrative had been written, and the Establishment Media is playing a role in that narrative.  The fact that the country was steamrolled into war by a false event should no longer shock you.  What should make you sit up wake from your slumber is the ease with which our overlords are willing to sacrifice lives for their ends.

If the cost is scores of thousands of deaths, so be it.  The Managers of Society demand that you, the high schooler, keep the script going - no matter the facts:

"The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that  could never have been solved in normal times." - - Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - - Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff, Obama administration.

EDIT - Here's Jesse Ventura explaining the above phenomena to ratings challenged Piers Morgan.  The fun begins around 7:00.