DD730 wrote:
Proving a negative is always difficult.

Yep. That's why it's convenient to make such claims. one thing that Vito
doesn't understand, if you're going to substitute fantasy for history,
then you have to choose a version that isn't directly contradicted by
reliable witnesses. Choose something that has no witnesses, instead!


... I suppose you'll have to interview
those who were there. I haven't done any research to see if anyone has done
so. At the time it was the talk of WestPac. All anyone saw was "blips" on
the radar screens.

In the second attack, yes.


... Even at the time, no one could "prove" that no
gunboats were out there, nor could they prove that there were. The
concluding "scuttlebutt" was that it was bogus, but a lot of careers were on
the line.

Right. And that's how a lot of policy gets started, unfortunately.

Anyway, having read quite a lot about the whole affair, it has been
pretty consistently said that the Tonkin Gulf incident was part of an
ongoing operation, that the North Vietnamese had fired on U.S. forces
several times during the course of it.

DSK