Congress gave Lyndon Johnson more or less unlimited power to "defend the United States" after North Vietnamese gun-boats apparently attacked an American destroyer on August 2 and August 4, 1964, but there were no attacks.
The NSA immediately classified Hanyok's report "top secret" and buried it in a black hole where it remained until 2005, when bits of it were leaked to the New York Times.
39 years later the Director of the CIA gave Colin Powell a little bottle to wave at the United Nations. "It could be anthrax!"
Congress and the press couldn't look at the evidence about Vietnam and Iraq, because all of it was secret, except for whatever supported the case for war.
But suppose there were no secrets, and all that garbage about phony attacks and non-existent weapons of mass destruction had been laid out for all the world to see.
There's obviously a very big upside: 58,000 American soldiers don't die in Vietnam, and 2,000,000 Asians don't die in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos, and 1,200,000 Iraqis don't die in Iraq, along with 5,000 American soldiers...
But what's the downside? What ever would we do without George Tenet, who couldn't find his own butt in a bathtub?
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