North Korea—Brace For Another Phony War

I was in Korea at the time of, what we called, the Bay of Tonkin crisis, and was placed on "Red Alert" at the time. Up to reading this article, I had not heard of Johnson's deceit on this issue, although knew that he was considered one of the most ruthless presidents we had had.

If Obama uses this tactic to re-energize his ratings, the MSM will most likely give him a pass. Here's hoping the American voters do not.

Excerpt: Upset by the Energizer Oil Spill, the healthcare bill or our economic ills? Don’t worry; you might not have to fret much longer. Not because anybody is going to fix these problems. Rather because President Barack Obama might be seeding a much bigger problem.

Last week Obama announced United States troops stationed in the Korean Peninsula were going to a war footing. The move came as South Korea announced it was cutting off all trade with the North in retaliation for what it claims is the deliberate sinking of its warship the Cheonan in March. The government in Seoul vowed “immediate” retaliation if North Korea attempted further provocations.

According to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, “U.S. support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal, and the President has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their [South Korean] counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression.”

I am not stupid enough to believe what comes from this reckless government and its midget dictator Kim Jong-il. Then again I am not stupid enough to believe everything the Federal government tells me either. If you are my age or older you might remember President Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin.

That military crisis was ushered to an unsuspecting public on Aug. 5, 1964, with a headline in The Washington Post that read: “American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression.” That same day The New York Times reported: “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.”

According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, There never was a “second attack” by North Vietnam. No “renewed attacks against American destroyers.” Instead these official lies told from the President on down took hold and opened the floodgates for the bloody and useless Vietnam war; a conflict that originally had a huge backing by the American public and swept LBJ into office with the greatest percentage of the total popular vote (61 percent) ever attained by a Presidential candidate.

The same LBJ who just three months before the election had ordered U.S. bombers to "retaliate" for a North Vietnamese torpedo attack; and attack that never happened. In fact a year later LBJ joked: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.” All very funny except for the terrible cost in blood and money that the Vietnam conflict inflicted. You notice I don’t use the word “war” because the U.S. didn’t declare war, not then and not in the nearly half century since.

The bottom line is I won’t be surprised if this fearless President stirs the nation into action and gets many of us ready at the ramparts in the face of a foreign horde. It is what General Douglas MacArthur warned us of.

“Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense,” said the General in 1951 adding: “Our threat is from the insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions—those institutions we proudly called the American way of life.”

MacArthur knew what it took to wage and win a real war. He also learned the hard way the politics and economics involved in a modern “conflict”… the kind of conflicts the U.S. invariably falls into when the nation’s economic or political woes grow out of control. North Korea—Brace For Another Phony War