RadioBanter - View Single Post - 59 Tomahawk Missiles @ $1.4 Million Per Missile = $82,600,000 cost toUS Taxpayer. Yes Smedley, War Is Still a Racket.

George Cornelius · April 15th 17, 02:01 AM posted to rec.radio.shortwave

In article , writes:

[...]

Lyndon B. Johnson: August 1964, in Vietnam=E2=80=99s Gulf of Tonkin, two U.
S. ships were reported attacked. Johnson went on the air that night and spo
ke to the American people about the "unprovoked" attack and
the bombing response he ordered in retaliation against the North. In all,
he ordered 64 sorties, bombing a coal mine, an oil depot, and much of North
Vietnam's navy.

I cannot highly enough recommend the documentary _The Fog of War_ directed
by Errol Morris, especially for those around during the Vietnam era.

From Wikiquotes ( https : // en.wikiquote.org / wiki / The_Fog_of_War ):

McNamara: It was just confusion, and events afterwards showed that our judgment
that we'd been attacked that day was wrong. It didn't happen. And the judgment
that we'd been attacked on August 2nd was right. We had been, although that was
disputed at the time. So we were right once and wrong once. Ultimately,
President Johnson authorized bombing in response to what he thought had been
the second attack; it hadn't occurred but that's irrelevant to the point I'm
making here. He authorized the attack on the assumption it had occurred, and
his belief that it was a conscious decision on the part of the North Vietnamese
political and military leaders to escalate the conflict and an indication they
would not stop short of winning. We were wrong, but we had in our minds a
mindset that led to that action. And it carried such heavy costs. We see
incorrectly or we see only half of the story at times.

Morris: We see what we want to believe.

McNamara: You're absolutely right. Belief and seeing, they're both often wrong.

George

Enough said.