"This, of course, is how American wars start. In the infamous 1964 “Gulf of Tonkin incident,” as it is often
referred to, the White House and the Pentagon accused North Vietnamese
forces of attacking two Navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin off
Vietnam on August 4. President Lyndon Johnson used the attacks to coax
Congress into approving a resolution, known as the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, that authorized military action in Vietnam. As the New York
Times noted a few years ago, the “attack never happened.”
And way back in February 1898, a U.S. warship, the Maine, was moored in
Havana’s harbor when a huge explosion blew it apart, killing most of
its crew. The explosion was blamed on Spain, and led to a rallying cry
particularly in U.S. newspapers of “Remember the Maine!” In April of
that year, the United States declared war on Spain, even though there
was no proof of Spanish responsibility for the explosion, and much
reason to doubt it. As the Washington Post reported, an official Navy
inquiry concluded in the 1970s that “a mine or torpedo could not have
been responsible for the blast. The likely cause was a coal bunker fire
that ignited the ship’s magazine.”