A Blast From the Past
They released lots of Nixon Era papers today. Naturally some dealt with Vietnam and the Cambodia "incursion" (since we didn't invade Cambodia.) Here's a snippet as reported from Associated Press and Yahoo! News:

In a memo from the meeting marked "Eyes Only, Top Secret Sensitive," Nixon told his military men to continue doing what was necessary in Cambodia, but to say for public consumption that the United States was merely providing support to South Vietnamese forces when necessary to protect U.S. troops.

"That is what we will say publicly," he asserted. "But now, let's talk about what we will actually do."

As I read that I thought of one other fact related to that particular point in history. It was the "incursion" into Cambodia that sparked a large number of protests in May, 1970. One of those was in a school in Ohio- Kent State. Here from Wikipedia:

The Kent State shootings, also known as May 4 or The Kent State Massacre, occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. Over the course of four days, Kent State students protested against an American invasion of Cambodia which President Richard Nixon launched on April 25 and which Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. There were significant national consequences: hundreds of colleges closed throughout the U.S., and the event further divided the nation along political lines.

The two events are linked forever. Now, to no one's surprise, I hope, we find out that it was filled with lies and misstatements and spin and just plain old political shenanigans. When you consider that the war itself was started on information about a naval attack in the Gulf of Tonkin that probably never happened, it is not out of the question to assume that a lot of other fabrications and wool-over-the-eyes events took place.

I make no judgement about any other war based on that last statement. At least I hope I don't have to.