Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.
Section 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress
Senate Debate: [Extracts]
MR. NELSON:
[Gaylord Nelson, Dem.-Wis.]… Am I to understand that it is the sense of Congress that we are saying to the executive branch: “If it becomes necessary to prevent further aggression, we agree now, in advance, that you may land as many divisions as deemed necessary, and engage in a direct military assault on North Vietnam if it becomes the judgment of the Executive, the Commander in Chief, that this is the only way to prevent further aggression”?
MR. FULBRIGHT:
[William Fulbright, Dem.-Ark] As I stated, section 1 is intended to deal primarily with aggression against our forces… I do not know what the limits are. I do not think this resolution can be determinative of that fact. I think it would indicate that he [the President] would take reasonable means first to prevent any further aggression, or repel further aggression against our own forces… I do not know how to answer the Senator’s question and give him an absolute assurance that large numbers of troops would not be put ashore. I would deplore it…
MR. NELSON:… My concern is that we in Congress could give the impression to the public that we are prepared at this time to change our mission and substantially expand our commitment. If that is what the sense of Congress is, I am opposed to the resolution. I therefore ask the distinguished Senator from Arkansas if he would consent to accept an amendment [that explicitly says Congress wants no extension of the present military conflict and no U.S. direct military involvement].
MR. FULBRIGHT:… The Senator has put into his amendment a statement of policy that is unobjectionable. However, I cannot accept the amendment under the circumstances. I do not believe it is contrary to the joint resolution, but it is an enlargement. I am informed that the House is now voting on this resolution. The House joint resolution is about to be presented to us. I cannot accept the amendment and go to conference with it, and thus take responsibility for delaying matters .
MR. GRUENING: [Ernest Gruening, Dem.-Alaska]… Regrettably, I find myself in disagreement with the President’s Southeast Asian policy… The serious events of the past few days, the attack by North Vietnamese vessels on American warships and our reprisal, strikes me as the inevitable and foreseeable concomitant and consequence of U.S. unilateral military aggressive policy in Southeast Asia… We now are about to authorize the President if he sees fit to move our Armed Forces… not only into South Vietnam, but also into North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and of course the authorization includes all the rest of the SEATO nations. That means sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business. which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated. This resolution is a further authorization for escalation unlimited. I am opposed to sacrificing a single American boy in this venture. We have lost far too many already…
MR. MORSE: [Wayne Morse, Dem.-Ore.]… I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States… I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake.
SOURCE: Congressional Record. August 6–7, 1964. Pp. 18132–33, 18406–7, 18458–59, and 18470–71.
TURIN SHROUD
The Turin Shroud is a 14-feet long strip of linen that carries the faint image of a long-haired man with a beard. A man with wounds consistent with crucifixion. A man with the mark of a lance wound in his side. A man with cuts along his forehead as though he had worn a crown of thorns.
Jesus Christ! (As it were.) The Shroud of Turin is the shroud in which the Saviour was buried, his image being transferred onto the cloth!
Well, maybe.
Ever since the shroud appeared in northern France around 1350, there have been doubts about its authenticity. One of its first caretakers, local Bishop Pierre d’Arcis, was convinced it was a fraud, just one of the forty or so doing the round of medieval cathedrals to entice the pilgrim trade. A papal edict even banned its owners from calling it the real shroud of Jesus.
Not until the 1960s did anyone much care about the shroud, when the Catholic Church set up a commission to determine the relic’s authenticity. The commission’s report, issued in 1976, found that pollen in the shroud suggested that the relic might have come from Palestine but the red on the cloth was paint not blood. In 1988, radiocarbon dating of small samples of the relic by three different teams of researchers (viz. Oxford University, Arizona University, Swiss Institute of Technology) all concluded that the cloth was woven between AD 1260 and 1390. Case for it’s-a-fake closed? Not quite. Other scientists assert that the carbon14-dating was thrown off course by 1,300 years because of the use of a bioplastic coating. And the red paint is from pilgrims holding pictures against the cloth in the hope of miraculous powers being transferred. Historian Ian Wilson, author of
Muddying the matter are alternative historians who mate the Turin Shroud mystery with their own pet conspiracy. Here Kersten and Gruber take the prize with
The Turin Shroud is a riddle wrapped in a mystery. Even if it was forged in the fourteenth century, the maker’s method befuddles contemporary scientists because the image looks like a photographic negative.
On this one, the jury is still out.
Holger Kersten and Elmar R. Gruber,
Joe Nickell,
Brendan Whiting,
Ian Wilson,
TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS STUDY
There are conspiracies that make you nervous, there are conspiracies that make you mad. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is the conspiracy that will make you weep with grief.
