The Next War

In May 1964, President Johnson expressed reservations about a war in Vietnam, as these transcripts show.

Nonetheless, A few months later, he deliberately distorted an uncertain incident to spark a massive escalation of that awful war.

When those messages came in, it was Daniel Ellsberg's first day as assistant to the Secretary of Defense. He watched those transmissions come in; watched the Johnson Administration use it as a causus belli; watched the war grow worse and worse and the lies more brazen. A few years later, he watched the DOD perform a massive review, and then watched them classify the 7,000 pages of results. He decided to risk life in prison to publish those documents, which clearly showed all of the lies and mistakes that were covered up.

Now, over 40 years since the Gulf of Tonkin incident, after lying us into our current terrible war, the Bush Administration is setting up a causus belli in a different gulf- the Persian Gulf. Intelligence sources have leaked to the press the startling fact that Bush has already signed a secret authorization for CIA to perform nonlethal covert actions to destabilize the government of Iran, including financial manipulations. At this very moment, nine American warships are performing aggressive maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran controls, and through which much of the world's oil supply moves. The Bush Administration is determined to force a confrontation with Iran, while fighting simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Here is what Daniel Ellsberg thinks about wrote about this possibility back in December.