Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Better than 'Nam

Everybody hates term papers. This is an universal truth. However. There are levels to which your term paper can be burdensome and suck. There’s the usual- You have a valid topic with plenty of information, and writing the paper is just annoying and requires effort you don’t want to spend. But then there’s my kind of term paper. You see, I’m fool enough to want to be different. I could’ve picked a topic which had plenty of information, like the Cold War or something World War II related. But no, I picked Vietnam. Given, Vietnam was a pretty big deal and has a lot of books written about it. But, being the daring (idiotic) student I am, I had to research disinformation during Vietnam.
We all know it happened. It’s sort of an accepted truth that everyone takes for granted, but I can’t find any source that gives me constant examples. Sure, you’ve got the Pentagon Papers. I thought that would be my saving grace, but unfortunately I forgot that the Pentagon Papers are 7,000 pages long. And believe it or not, it’s not 7,000 pages of juicy Vietnam disinformation tactics.
But I’ll stop bitching. What I really want to do is share with you all my startling findings of Vietnam disinformation. Once I dug deep enough, there is actually an astonishing amount of hidden meaning behind all of the government’s actions at the time. So without further ado, let me tell you what really happened in Vietnam:

August 4th, 1964. Two American Destroyers tread Vietnamese water in the Gulf of Tonkin in an attempt to survey the happenings of the Vietnamese conflict. The story goes that Vietnamese torpedo ships confronted the US Destroyers and attacked. The Destroyers escaped in a narrow escape.
Indeed, that was the story Lyndon Johnson told the American public. However, CIA agent Victor Marchetti would later retire and publish the truth in his essay to the Revisionist Conference, “Propoganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History” ( http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/9/3/Marchetti305-320.html). In the essay, he explains how the Gulf of Tonkin incident involved no actual battle at all. Vietnamese torpedoes never did fire upon the US vessels. The men aboard the Destroyers though that there may have been attack attempts, but there was no damage to the ship, and no one saw any fire. So why did Lyndon Johnson report an attack to the American people?
The report came from the captain of one of the American Destroyers, Kid Sticklan. According to his engineer, Stricklan had a discussion with Johnson in which Johnson “heavily suggested” that Stricklan tell Congress that he had seen torpedo fire. Stricklan did so, and Johnson received his “blank check” from Congress, essentially, his permission slip to enter Vietnam.
So why was Johnson so eager to enter Vietnam? In the Pentagon Papers, it is clearly documented that, long before, the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson had been looking for a window of opportunity to enter Vietnam. In an entry to the Pentagon Papers, Johnson states that their entrance into Vietnam is on a “contingency basis”. Meaning he was looking for the right moment.
So why enter Vietnam? Well, apparently Stricklan wasn’t just the captain of the Destroyer. He was also a Russian spy. In the document “Stricklan is a Commy”, it is revealed that Johnson was actually the puppet of the U.S.S.R. The Russian dictator of the time, Joseph Stalin II, was actually behind a brilliant scam.
Enter the computer geniuses. Just decades after the computer’s inception into the world’s culture, the U.S.S.R. was already developing brainwashing computer technology. Stalin, having obtained an exclusive copy of page 128 from his Japanese brethren, finally knew where to find the one man he had been searching for all of his life.
As the US marched on Vietnam (according to Stalin’s wishes, unbeknownst to them), Stalin readied his cartridge.
5 years into Vietnam, and Stalin had completed the Banjo Kazooie portion. As the American public began to lose enthusiasm in the fight, Stalin ordered Johnson to report false body counts to the people to increase morale. He then proceeded to stage two: getting the ice key, and slamming the Banjo Tooie cartridge into the N64. He now had approximately a minute and a half before his N64 exploded. He raced to the ice vault to find a hologram of Luigi saying “Help me, Banjo Kazooie, you’re my only hope.”
Stalin’s N64 exploded from the shards of cartridge jammed into it, and he was fatally maimed on April 30, 1975. His death broke the hypnotic hold he had on American president Gerald Ford. Ford immediately realized what had happened and pulled out of Vietnam. After all, why else would we have possibly stayed so long?
Alas, Luigi may still be alive…somewhere in Vietnam.
Stalin’s copy of page 128 was never recovered from the explosion.

I think this is a definite 100%.

Seriously, I’m gonna get shot someday.

-OSK

Hey reader…you’re ugly.

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