One real attack August 2, one confused incident where actually no attack happened.
It's kind of true but really it's hardly a false flag operation
(paraphrasing and being kind to US administration - US Navy breached territorial waters, exchanged fire on Aug 2, then on Aug 4 they fired upon radar returns and possible signals traffic. The second time there was no actual North Vietnamese and the Navy expressed doubts but US administration wanted to escalate and both incidents became conflated. It's not the same as for example pre-planned false flag operations. Is there a fine line? Yes. exactly where that is is hard to say.
I didn't read the above to mean "Knowingly trying to claim at attack that did not happen". I read it as "We aren't sure there's someone there, but please just shoot anyway we need to be aggressive", and political officials portrayed that as "Attack" without proof.
These are congruent accounts with different interpretations, and I tend to believe public speakers are opportunistic spin doctors, not world-shaping conspirators.
As for "never trust a 3 letter agency", that's quite an extreme viewpoint. CDC? EPA? FBI? CIA? NSA? All of them do good, even if their findings can be spun ( or are even directed to be spun ).
What do you think is the good? Maybe the FBI to some extend (my point was quite a hyperbole I know). But under the line they mostly do bad imho. And they spin their own "findings", that's how we got into this conversation.
I the plan was to invade Vietnam/Iraq, and the attack are propped up to "allow" then to invade. If you think they govt was deceived by it's own speakers, that to my is quite a stretch... The plan was to invade, and the story was made to match. That is a conspiracy in and of itself.
And when Communists took power in Vietnam then exactly what was expected to happen happened - a large scale human tragedy with mass killings and torture and mass exodus.
Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer who had murdered around 400 000 people - half of them after US refused to take him down after the Gulf War. Any excuse to get him removed was a good one.
The right time to take down Saddam was after the secind gulf war, the first one with US participation. In the first gulf war between Iraq and Iran, Iraq was an US ally.
And no, removing Saddam with good reason was a really bad idea...
To cut it short, in the frame on the war on terror 4.5 million people died, almost a million directly related to the war and 38 million people displaced. If you think all that was a just price to pay to get Saddam and Bin-Laden, because the Taliban pretty much won, you should re-adjust your moral compass.
Why should I readjust my moral compass? Because people could not forget their feuds and started to kill? The system held together by terror was pushed out of equilibrium. They had a change to find a better one but they chose not to. If anything then US has done not enough by letting sociopaths in Syria and Iran still run the show - a huge part of the deaths (I'm not going to dispute your claimed numbers) could have been averted and not only in Middle East.
Do you have a rule of thumb how many deaths you are willing to accept and risk on what probabilities for which futures? Also, you used the term sociopaths, do you consider yourself a psychopath?
It is clear now that Syrian leader was willing to murder hundreds of thousands of people, so were Iranian leaders. Moving against them early "could have" avoided large part of the Middle East casualties.
What perspective other then ideology has this not apply to your own position? You seemed pretty comfortable in your position despite the number of people killed and outcome counter to your declared intention.
"From 1964 to 1973, the United States bombed Laos more heavily than any country on earth. The reason most Americans do not know this is because it was a secret war orchestrated by the CIA; it stands as the largest covert CIA operation to date."
"One team can find anywhere from three to 16 bombs in a day. The UXO Lao’s 2015 annual report states that since 1996, 1.4 million UXO have been cleared in Laos by a combined effort of UXO Lao and other UXO-clearing organizations, like MAG International. At this rate, it will take thousands of years before Laos is free of UXO."
"Forty percent of UXO victims are children who pick up the bombs, usually thinking they are toys."
US didn't bomb Laos, it bombed Vietnamese Communists covertly operating in and from Laos against Republic of Vietnam and US. The reason that it was a covert war was geopolitical - every actor there operated covertly.
In my country we still find ordnance from WW2 or even WW1. I even had some close encounters.
It looks like some early training of children can save lives. What I can read from https://laos.worlded.org/projects/uxo-education-and-awarenes... is that the education is mainly addressed toward primary school children meaning that the children below the age of 6 will not receive any education (from the program, perhaps there are other programs). What is completely lacking is education of parents.
Now what about cluster bombs in Ukraine?
These have been proven to be highly effective against Russian attacks.
If we talk about future safety concerns then Russian forces have laid mines over vast areas. The density can be as much as 5 mines per square meter and I doubt that they will share the mining maps when this eventually ends (if they even have systematic maps). Already the area affected by the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam by Russians has mines randomly scattered all over the area because of massive flooding.
Ukraine is keeping track of its cluster munition usage and the low percentage of unexploded munitions is a mere drop against the mayhem Russia has created.
Keep in mind that Russia has very clearly declared its genocidal goals.
One real attack August 2, one confused incident where actually no attack happened.
It's kind of true but really it's hardly a false flag operation
(paraphrasing and being kind to US administration - US Navy breached territorial waters, exchanged fire on Aug 2, then on Aug 4 they fired upon radar returns and possible signals traffic. The second time there was no actual North Vietnamese and the Navy expressed doubts but US administration wanted to escalate and both incidents became conflated. It's not the same as for example pre-planned false flag operations. Is there a fine line? Yes. exactly where that is is hard to say.