The New York Times on Sunday featured a lengthy story about August 4, 1964, the new oratorio by composer Steven Stucky and librettist Gene Scheer. Commissioned by the Dallas Symphony, the musical piece focuses on a pivotal day in Lyndon Johnson’s presidency: the day the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers were found in Mississippi. It was also the day an intelligence report of an atttack by North Vietnam boats on a U. S. Navy ship was “mangled and probably falsified” — as a pretext for war. The Times story makes the case that, no matter what the DSO may have originally planned and even what the creators first thought, it’s going to be hard not to hear August 4 and not think of another Texas president, another war and another instance of manipulated intelligence.