And almost 60,000 American GIs died as a consequence. Robert McNamara who died Monday and is regarded as the architect of the disastrous Vietnam War deliberately misled President Johnson and did not inform him that the Gulf of Tonkin crisis had not occurred. His actions as Secretary of Defense also cost the lives of millions of Vietnamese civilians and contamination from Agent Orange causes life threatening birth defects to this day.
The records of the Tonkin Gulf crisis in the LBJ library also include documentation showing LBJ wanted to get the truth about what McNamara knew and when he knew it.
Even before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was approved by the Senate Aug. 7, LBJ ordered a full account of the communications between the commanders of U.S. Pacific forces and the Pentagon on Aug. 4 and 5. The requested study was referred to as the “inquiry,†according to a handwritten note on a draft chronology prepared at the Pentagon. It was to be based on the original tapes of all such communications, which were tracked down and transcribed.
Despite a mea culpa many years later wherein McNamara admitted in a 2003 documentary ‘Fog of War’ he was wrong and Vietnam could not be won militarily, this man deserves to rot in darkest, hottest vestiges of hell.
There was also an assassination attempt against McNamara
