Plus Ce Change...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A top US spy agency declassified data showing agents skewed intelligence to back claims of a communist attack on a US destroyer in 1964, an incident which led to the escalation of the Vietnam War....

Senior NSA officers had apparently feared the explosive findings could prompt comparisons to claims the Bush administration twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Ya think?

The article, by NSA historian Robert Hanyok, based on signals intelligence or SIGINT, concludes what historians have long suspected -- there was no second attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on US destroyers on August 4, 1964....

But Hanyok's article concludes that neither Johnson, nor his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were personally involved in manipulating intelligence on the incident, and believed it authentic.

The comparisons with Iraq are bound to be made, but they're also bound to be wrong. Anyone who watched Fog of War, the excellent documentary by Errol Morris, has already learned that there was no second attack.

It's interesting to know that, once in American history, the President and Secretary of Defense actually were unwittingly misinformed by the intelligence services, leading to a disastrous war. Today, the President and SecDef demand to be misinformed, leading to a disastrous war.

I said interesting, not comforting.