Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

In 2003, almost 40 years after the non-event, the incident that never happened, it was revealed with no apparent remorse or shame that our government had lied to us about the Gulf of Tonkin and the fabricated attack on our Navy, which served as justification for our ensuing invasion and brutal slaughter of over two million Vietnamese. Two million people standing in a line would extend 1,500 miles along the entire eastern coast from Maine to Florida. That’s a lot of carnage that all Americans, you and I, like it or not, must take responsibility for, a lot of wrongful deaths and killings and lives lost, based on a lie. Who was to blame? What happened to the high-ranking officials, psychopathic policy makers calling themselves American who intentionally lied to us in order to create such a war of their choosing?

We all know how precious life is. And though we’re aware that a death outside our own family is not nearly so painful as a death within, as human beings we understand that when it comes to death there is no escaping the pain and hatred and instinctive, relentless, repugnant need for revenge that someone, somewhere must be feeling especially in those cases when death is brought on or caused by another nation.

After experiencing the lie of the Gulf of Tonkin, the national disgrace and the lack of moral integrity demonstrated, we can no longer casually assume and accept that what our two-party system tells us about the enemy might be true and then simply hope for the best. It becomes our obligation, our responsibility, the people’s burden, no matter how much a complicit media tries to censor us and shame us, to demand that what our government tells us is beyond a shadow of a doubt true. Avoiding the painful, scientific evidence blatantly omitted by the Warren Commission Report and the 9/11 Commission Report and the many legitimate, intuitive questions which have surfaced since, no matter how long ago, no matter how much peer pressure is put upon us to move on, is no longer an option. All questions must be answered. We must ask ourselves, what if we are being lied to again? There is no organization, no agency within our government that can fix this for us. Some say it is already too late. Our only hope is to wake up others still sleeping and to have faith in our numbers and in our collective need and pursuit of truth. Our hope is in establishing our own people’s agenda, not the government’s, and in electing representatives who truly represent us, the people, not themselves and those who lobby them.

Don’t take my word for it. Research it yourself. What’s up with the growing disconnect between the propagandized mainstream news and alternative news on the internet that the rest of the world reads? It’s never too late to expose any possible wrongdoing, (as with innocent death row victims), to thoroughly investigate any and all possible procedural mistakes regarding methodology and evidence withheld or dismissed, especially for crimes of such critical, historical significance. The further such crime goes back in time, unchallenged, the more corruption we can expect to find in its place. Go to Experts Speak Out. Let your voice be heard. Don’t leave it to someone else, your neighbor, an old classmate, a friend or relative, to fight for your personal freedom and the disappearing constitutional rights of your children. It’s time to step up and face the music. Would a truly representative republic want it any other way?

Nick van Nes, West Tisbury