re: here's a simple leading question
Late in the Vietnam War, the publication of the secret "Pentagon Papers" showed that the pretext used to ram a 1964 resolution authorizing military action through the USA Congress had been a lie. The story about a little Vietnamese PT boat attacking a huge USA warship was fabricated by the Pentagon.
The Gulf of Tonkin resolution was the legal fig leaf for a war that eventually killed 3 million Vietnamese and nearly 60,000 USA troops.
