A Kennedy on Vietnam, 2014

      A documentary will be released Friday produced by a niece of the late president JFK.  Rory Kennedy is the 11th child of Robert and Ethyl Kennedy and lives in Malibu, California.  The film was written by her husband, Mark Bailey, and Kevin McAlester.  Ms. Kennedy has directed or produced more than 30 films, including "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib"(2007), about the prison in Iraq; and "Ethyl", about her mother, now 86.
     The film, "The Last Days of Vietnam",  will  evoke memories of the Kennedy family whose involvement began when JFK was elected to the Senate in the '50's.  The film was broadly reviewed in Sunday's NYT and the entire column can be viewed at nytimes.com.
     It is only fitting that this film be released for it was during August, 1964, 50 long years ago, that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident splashed across the headlines as President Lyndon Johnson decided to take action against alleged attacks in international waters by North Vietnamese patrol boats.  Johnson was in the midst of a heated election campaign against Republican candidate, Se. Barry Goldwater of Arizona.   The Air Force Reserve General was running a spirited campaign characterized by bellicose statements regarding Communist activities in Southeast Asia, the Taiwan Straits, and other WestPac locations.  Democrats did not want their candidate to be branded a softy on Communism and approved of his rhetoric and his armed response to the North Vietnamese attacks.   To this day, the actual events are shrouded in a fog of mixed signals, wrong moves, false reports, and chasing ghosts in the Gulf of Tonkin.  Perhaps the film will include a reference to this minor incident that led to over 12 years of war and hundreds of thousands of deaths of all participants.