Thread by @dan_pericles

Pleiku: as news comes in from Hormuz, worth recalling:
Bundy later acknowledged that Pleikus were like ‘streetcars’. He could count on repeated Viet Cong attacks to provide him with the pretext he needed at the opportune moment to sell escalation to the president.
and 1/

The fighting on Ongjin began around 3 or 4 A.M. 5/ 25/50 ; initial intelligence reports were inconclusive as to who started it. … Col. James Peach, an Australian with the UN observer group: “I never quite knew what went on. There’s a bit of a mystery still about Haeju, 2/

it might have been [South Korea's] Paek and his merry men attacking … It’s been said they attacked and NK responded.” Peach went on to say that he didn’t think this version held much water…. There is no evidence to back up the North’s claim that the South launched a 3/

general invasion; at worst there may have been a small assault across the parallel, as happened many times in 1949.
I hate historical "parallels." But worth noting how little it takes to start killing people in what Krebs dubs "unsettled times." 4/

Hormuz:
nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/navy…
Pleiku:
amazon.com/Avoiding-Makin…
Korea (p. 10): 5/
amazon.com/Korean-War-His…