January 15, 2008
by Zen Garcia

"Iran speedboats 'threatened suicide attack on US' in Strait of Hormuz" the headlines of the Times Online exclaimed about the so-called incident where 5 Iranian speedboats were said to have threatened American warships with hostile intention.  The White House in response issued a stern warning to Tehran claiming that such actions amounted to acts of war.  The Pentagon claimed that US forces were only moments away from opening fire on the Iranian speedboats before they veered off and quickly sped away.  The video released detailing the muffled exchange of dialogue between the so-called suicide bombers and U.S. Navy personnel was cited as Iran's intent to start a war with America.

"We urge the Iranians to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future," said Gordon Johnson, spokesman for the White House's National Security Council.  The decider himself boasted to reporters in the Rose Garden, hours before he left for the Middle East to attempt bolstering support for American foreign-policy.   "We viewed it as a provocative act. It is a dangerous situation, and they should not have done it, pure and simple."

The video released by the Pentagon relays this exchange:

IRANIAN VOICE: I am coming to you.


US NAVAL OFFICER: Inbound small craft, you're approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not know. Your intentions are unclear. You're sailing into danger and may be subject to defensive measures. Request you establish communications now or alter your course immediately to remain clear. Request you alter course immediately to remain clear.


IRANIAN VOICE: You will explode after a few minutes.


US NAVAL OFFICER: "You will explode after a few minutes."

Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman said that the American vessels were in international waters, making a normal transit through the Gulf. He boasted that Iranians were operating at distances and speeds that showed "reckless, dangerous and potentially hostile intent.  At least some were visibly armed."  American mainstream media was quick to pick up the story and relay it to the world without verifying the facts or details behind the Pentagon's claim.  This was the same thing they did prior to the Iraq invasion when weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds on American soil were also touted in the same fear mongering kind of way. 

The reason I titled this article "Gulf of Tonkin  Revisited" is because this same exact thing was done prior to the Vietnam War.  For those that do not know, the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin which instigated the entire Vietnam War was based solely on a pair of supposed attacks allegedly carried out by naval forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam targeting 2 Navy destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy on  August 2 and 4, 1964.

These incidents lead to Congressional passage of the Southeast Asia Resolution, granting Lyndon Johnson authorization to assist any southeastern Asian country whose government was considered threatened by "communist aggression". The resolution gave America and Johnson legal justification for quick involvement in Viet Nam.  Recently, in two separate declassified intelligence reports released in 2005 and in 2008, the National Security Agency verified that it was our U.S. Navy destroyer the Maddox which fired first upon North Vietnamese patrol boats.  The second report verified that no attack even occurred on August 4 and that both incidents were exaggerated or fabricated to justify American involvement in Vietnam.

"American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression", announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964. Followed later the same day by the New York Times headline: "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."  It wasn't until 30 years later and 50,000 American soldiers lost, and untold Vietnamese killed that the truth even crept out.

Kurt Nimmo released an article called "Hiding the Gulf of Tonkin Lie" in which he said, "It should come as no surprise the NSC "has kept secret a 2001 finding by its own historian that its officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence during the Tonkin Gulf episode that helped precipitate the Vietnam War," according to the New York Times. "Most historians have concluded in recent years there was no second attack [against US destroyers on August 4, 1964], but they have assumed the agency's intercepts were unintentionally misread, not purposely altered.

The research by Robert Hanyok, the agency's historian, was detailed four years ago in an in-house article that remains secret, in part because agency officials feared its release might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, according to an intelligence official."

(Article Continues Below)

Here we are in 2008, the Bush administration lied to get us into the Iraq war everybody knows that.  What some might not know is that the decider's father also pulled off his own hoax to justify invading Iraq after greenlighting Saddam's own invasion of Kuwait.  From an article entitled "How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf."  "The most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait.

Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. 'I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital,' Nayirah said. 'While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.'  Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush Sr. told the story.

It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. 'Of all the accusations made against the dictator,' MacArthur observed, 'none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."

Did you know that the heart wrenching story of abandoned babies dying on a cold unforgiving floor was given by the daughter of the ambassador to Kuwait a personal friend and confidant of George Bush Sr. and that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family.  Kuwaiti investigators even released their own findings on the report and called it completely fabricated and that she had not even been in Kuwait during the alleged time of the incident. 

It didn't matter, the press played up her story, George Bush Sr. repeated her allegations over and over and Congress justifying action gave him narrow authority for the invasion of Iraq in the first Gulf War.  Our own Senators and Representatives knew also that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and that the story was a complete myth, but went along with it for personal benefit.

This past Thursday Iran released its own version of the video detailing the incident in the Strait of Hormuz which verifies that the Pentagon account may have been doctored to justify military action against Iran.  Much like the supposed funneling of Iranian armaments into Iraq to kill American troops, the Bush administration is trying everything they can to persuade the public that Iran is a threat to its neighbors. 

Do you know that Iran has not invaded any of its neighbors in over 2000 years and only fought a war with Iraq because of American support of Saddam Hussein, who was then still a puppet of the US and waging war at our behest.  American profit at the expense of Middle eastern blood.  What's different now?

Besides how are we to justify a war with Iran when a couple of speedboats armed with nothing but machine guns would seek to threaten American warships the size of cities on the sea?  It doesn't make any kind of sense especially in light of the video release of the Iranian version of the same incident.  I bet the Pentagon was shocked to see that Iran also had video of the very same incident but with differing result. 

"In a bid to counter earlier Pentagon accusations that the Iranians warned they could blow up the US vessels, Iran's English-language Press-TV broadcast a video showing an Iranian commander in a speedboat contacting an American sailor via radio, asking him to identify the US vessels and state their purpose:"

If you enjoyed this post, please make a donation to help keep this website active:

Click Here for the Free Populist Party Newsletter

Zen Garcia [send him email] is Executive Director for Endeavor Freedom Inc., Executive Producer for EndeavorFreedom.TV, and Chairman of the board for Multiple Choices -an Athens, GA area Center for Independent Living. He is the author of three books; Look Somewhere Different, When the Evening Dies, and A Different Way of Being. A one time columnist with Disabled Dealer Magazine, Zen is now a regular contributor to the Populist Party of America.