I've been thinking lately about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was used as justification for the U.S. to enter fully into the Vietnam war.

According to the U.S. Naval Institute, "The administration's zeal for aggressive action, motivated by President Johnson's election worries, created an atmosphere of recklessness and overenthusiasm in which it became easy to draw conclusions based on scanty evidence and to overlook normally prudent precautionary measures. Without the full picture, Congress could not offer the checks and balances it was designed to provide. Subsequently, the White House carried the nation into the longest and one of the most costly conflicts in our nation's history."

As a song from that era says, "When will they ever learn..."