Unnecessary Violence Quotes
The president had publicly stated that two American ships—Turner Joy and Maddox—had been attacked off the coast of North Vietnam. The ships returned fire an “drove the attackers off”. This incident was the justification of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which authorized the American military to bomb Hanoi and the rest of North Vietnam. The NSA had issued a secret report stating that there was no evidence of any attack at all even though the ships had fired their guns. One theory was that the very sensitive radar the shipps carried had detected a large school of flying fish, many of whom were out of the water at any one time. The President, who had escalated the war to respond to this “attack”, privately gave this explanation.
Personal attacks have been made in the Congress ever since that body first met. However, they were infrequent and raised concern when they were made. However, in the late 1980s, there was a series of personal attacks made across the political parties culminating in the resignation of Wright as the Speaker of the House. Some Republicans had objected to the failure to confirm John Tower as Defense Secretary because of his serious alcoholism problem which was made public, and in turn made public some of Wright’s indiscretions. From then on the personal invective and attacks increases and there was retaliation by both parties that went on for decades. At first it was exposures of real incidents but by the 21st century, the attacks were often fabricated. For example, Barack Obama was called a “Socialist Muslim” by Republicans. See {624108}
