NSA bosses feared releasing Gulf of Tonkin intel would draw ''uncomfortable comparisons'' with Iraq

[Octafish]

30. Secret Government is un-American

Yet, those who control the secrets seem to get to have their way on matters of war and peace more often than not.

Peter Lisagor: Senator, the Constitution gives to the President of the United States the sole responsibility for the conduct of foreign policy...

Wayne Morse: ...couldn't be more wrong, you couldn't make a more unsound legal statement than the one you have just made...

Norman Solomon: Morse was only one of two Senators, the other was Ernest Gruening of Alaska, to vote against the Tonkin resolution. It was kind of an invitation to stand up and salute the flag, and anybody who refused to do so was attacked as a, was essentially treated as, a pariah, attacked as somebody who lacked requisite patriotism and military resolve...

Phillip Babich: Thirty-five years ago, the Gulf of Tonkin incident led, days later, to Congressional passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson backing to launch military strikes against North Vietnam. Only two senators dissented. One of them was Oregon Senator Wayne Morse. On this program we take a look at Morse's role in opposing the Vietnam war. We'll also examine what his legacy means today, as the U.S. government continues to plan for wars and work with the mass media to win-over public opinion.

I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact an international radio program seeking to make create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information.

On August 5, 1964, a headline on the front page of the Washington Post declared: "American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression." That same day the front page of 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." As it turned out, however, there was no "second attack" or "renewed attacks against American destroyers." But public perception of the events that actually took place in the Gulf of Tonkin was skewed by the mass media, and days later, on August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

No official declaration of war was ever made with regard to U.S. military action in Vietnam.

Peter Lisagor: Senator Morse, what do you mean when you call our participation in the South Vietnam war unconstitutional and illegal?

Wayne Morse: Our government has no right to send American boys to their death in any battlefield in the absence of a declaration of war, and Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution vests the prerogative of declaring war in the Congress of the United States. And no war has been declared in Southeast Asia, and until a war is declared, it is unconstitutional to send American boys to their death in South Vietnam, or anywhere else in Southeast Asia. I don't know why we think, just because we're mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right. And that's the American policy in Southeast Asia. It's just as unsound when we do it as when Russia does it.

CONTINUED...

http://www.radioproject.org/transcript/1999/9941.html

Morse began as a Republican, became an Independent when Ike and Nixon got in, and became a Democrat a while later.

FTR: That's how a person who believes in democracy acts and lives.