The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a false flag operation organized by the secret services of the United States, to be used as a pretext in their participation in the Vietnam War; this simulated a false attack by North Vietnamese forces against United States Navy ships in Southeast Asia, which had penetrated waters that the United States claimed as international, but which Vietnam claimed as nationals. Videos were presented as evidence of such attacks and this served as a pretext for President Lyndon B. Johnson to ask Congress for a large extension of military missions carried out by soldiers assigned as military advisers in Vietnam, and with it, the beginning of the massive intervention of the United States in that war, going from 60,000 soldiers that were already operating in Vietnam to 500,000 at the moments of greatest intensity of the conflict.
Declassified documents show that indeed the incident never happened and that the US intelligence falsified data to justify the subsequent intervention.
The gulf of Tonkin incident led the United States Congress
to overwhelming approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution gave
President Lyndon B. Johnson virtually unlimited powers to oppose communist
aggression in Southeast Asia. President Lyndon was also advised on how any
potential war with the North Vietnamese might be fought.
The "Populist Party" influenced the way senators are elected with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, since they felt as though the existing system was incredibly unfair and un-democratic.
