The Gulf of Tonkin Incident: Pretext for War

In 1964 an American ship claimed that Vietnamese ships had fired torpedoes at it. It turns out, this never happened. Nevertheless, the President of the US, at that time, Lyndon Johnson, used this 'attack' as an excuse to begin bombing North Vietnam.

The person interviewed in this video is Robert McNamara, and I am not sure how believable he is. After the war he spent a lot of time trying to prove that he was not guilty of helping to cause this war.

One part of the video is really confusing to me. He mentions a coup in South Vietnam which lead to the killing of the South Vietnamese president Diem.  He claims this was a surprise to him and that Kennedy was very angry about this.

Many historians, however, believe that kennedy, himself, ordered the military coup and also ordered the assassination of Diem.