“The Tonkin incident – the supposed attack on American destroyers by North Vietnamese torpedo boats near the coast of Vietnam – became the excuse for the swift American escalation of the colonial war that the French had lost in 1954 and that the United States had taken over.”

“The Tonkin incident – the supposed attack on American destroyers by North Vietnamese torpedo boats near the coast of Vietnam – became the excuse for the swift American escalation of the colonial war that the French had lost in 1954 and that the United States had taken over.”

— Howard Zinn