Commentary by Randy Rowland, Seattle, WA

Vets to demonstrate at USS Turner Joy.

Say "Don't let phony incident drag us into war."


Veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the war against Vietnam, and the Gulf War are holding a rally, sponsored by Veterans For Peace, at the USS Turner Joy, currently moored in Bremerton, WA, on February 15, 2003 at 10am.

The USS Turner Joy, along with the USS Maddox, was involved in the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident, which then President Lynden Johnson used to propel the US into war against Vietnam. The USS Turner Joy, escorting the Maddox, sent messages to Washington indicating the ship was under attack. It was later found that no such attack took place; the messages were blamed on nervous crewmembers and radar "ghost images." But it was the excuse
President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara sought. They pressed Congress for a declaration of war. Captured by the moment's hysteria, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.*

The USS Turner Joy represents a great lie, foisted on the American people and the world. An incident that never took place resulted in a terrible war which is now summed up as a mistake.

This lie led us into a war resulting in the deaths of two to three million South East Asians. In addition, there are over 58,000 US names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington DC. Besides those who died in Vietnam, and who are listed on the Memorial Wall, veteran groups in the US estimate that more than twice as many GIs came home to commit suicide as died in Vietnam. This means that an astounding two thirds of American military personnel who died from that war took their own lives.

In the American war against Vietnam, GIs who were there knew better than anybody that we didn’t belong in Vietnam and were not doing right. These veterans and their families paid a high price for knowing the truth first hand.

But the Gulf of Tonkin incident is not the only time our country has been tricked into a war of expansion. Some of the veterans going to protest at the USS Turner Joy will be holding signs saying "Remember the Maine," a reference to the US battleship which exploded and sunk in Havana in
1898.

Years later, after several official investigations, including the raising of the ship, nobody has ever proven exactly what happened. The most credible theory is that an accidental fire in a coal bunker ignited the adjacent ammunition magazine. The sinking of the Maine provided the excuse for the US press and President to drag the nation into what Mark Twain described as our "first imperialist war."

For many years, as a result of that war, the US ruled Cuba, first with a US military governor, later using a series of puppet dictators who by law were selected
by the US government. Direct US control over the Cuban government did not end until Fidel Castro marched into Havana. The Spanish-American War, entered as a result of the lies and hype concerning the USS Maine, also allowed the US to take over the Philippines as its new colonial master. US military forces displaced the Spanish who had previously exploited that island nation and immediately
turned their guns on the Filipino people.

A World War II vet who will be at the veterans' action at the USS Turner Joy maintains that Pearl Harbor should be on the list of lies which got the US into unpopular wars. There is a credible body of evidence that the US government had prior knowledge regarding the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, not the least of which is the banner headline on the front page of the Pearl Harbor Sunday paper one week before the attack, which stated "Japanese To Attack Pearl Harbor." This veteran has a copy of that newspaper.

Many WW II veterans feel that Pearl Harbor was a set-up, where American sailors were left as floating targets on obsolete ships. There is good reason to believe President Roosevelt knew of the impending attack on the US fleet and allowed it to happen to turn around US public opinion,
which until then had been strongly against starting a war with Japan. [see "Day of Deceit," written by Robert B Stinnett, who served with honor in WWII under the command of George Bush Sr.]

Finally, the veterans at the USS Turner Joy hope to direct public attention to a recently released book written by respected journalist James Bamford, former investigative producer for "ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings." Bamford has written investigative stories for "The New York Times Magazine," "The Washington Post Magazine" and other publications. In his latest book, "Body of Secrets," Bamford relies on long-suppressed official government records which demonstrate that in 1962 top Pentagon officials hatched a plan "Operation Northwoods," which called for innocent people to be shot on American streets, planes to be hijacked and phony evidence to be manufactured, all to convince Congress and the American public to support a war against Cuba. Every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze supported Operation Northwoods. The plan was given to JFK¹s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera, but was rejected by the Kennedy White House, and thus never carried out. [see "Body of Secrets" by James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following]


With three documented instances that actually started wars, and one that would have happened if Kennedy had not stopped it, there is a terrible precedent for duping the public into a war nobody really wants. The veterans who demonstrate at the USS Turner Joy feel that it is their ty to alert the US public to the possibility of another suspicious "incident." It is clear that President Bush does not have a mandate for his war against Iraq. Veterans fear that yet another pretext for war will be manufactured to correct this shortcoming.

The veterans at the USS Turner Joy, familiar with the true costs of war, will beg the American public to be wary, to watch for such an incident, and to resist the inevitable pull to destruction which it will generate. We have been down this road before and it is the road to hell.

The rally is the first action by Western Washington Veterans For Peace, the newest among ninety chapters nationwide.

* for verification that no attack took place on the Turner Joy, see memoirs of Senator Frank Church, also see Argument Without End by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera. (1999, P203)