Gulf of Tonkin Redux: Did an American Mine Sink South Korean Ship?

Yoichi Shimatsu
New America Media
May 29, 2010

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Editor’s note: The sinking of the Cheonan took place in South Korean waters dominated by a joint U.S.-Korean base for anti-submarine warfare operations, an area North Korea admits it does not have the technology to penetrate with its submarines. It is speculated the USNS Salvor was was laying bottom mines in the area and a rising mine was inadvertently released. “If indeed it was an American rising mine that sank the Cheonan, it would constitute a friendly-fire accident,” writes Yoichi Shimatsu. Or it was a Gulf of Tonkin incident intended to provide a pretext to blame North Korea. Either way, don’t expect the corporate media to report on this.

“Are we once again going back to an old recipe (already used twice) in the past 100 years? The economy is tanking, lets fix it and turn people’s attention with staging another war as the only proven business,” writes the Macedonian International News Agency.

South Korean Prime Minister Lee Myung-bak has claimed “overwhelming evidence” that a North Korean torpedo sank the corvette Cheonan on March 26, killing 46 sailors. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that there’s “overwhelming evidence” in favor of the theory that North Korea sank the South Korean Navy warship Cheonan. But the articles of proof presented so far by military investigators to an official inquiry board have been scanty and inconsistent.

There’s yet another possibility, that a U.S. rising mine sank the Cheonan in a friendly-fire accident.

In the recent U.S.-China strategic talks in Shanghai and Beijing, the Chinese side dismissed the official scenario presented by the Americans and their South Korean allies as not credible. This conclusion was based on an independent technical assessment by the Chinese military, according to a Beijing-based military affairs consultant to the People Liberation Army.

Hardly any of the relevant facts that counter the official verdict have made headline news in either South Korea or its senior ally, the United States.

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This article was posted: Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 9:32 am

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