Joseph Galloway on McNamara: "Reading an obit with great pleasure"

[scarletwoman]

Commentary: Galloway on McNamara: Reading an obit with great pleasure

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." — Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.

Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McMamara while doing research for my book We Were Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process." Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they were not bald-faced lies.

Upon hanging up I would call Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam and run McNamara's comments past them for deconstruction and the addition of the truth.

The only disagreement i ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.

When McNamara published his first book — filled with those distortions of history — Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.

McNamara abandoned the tour.

(read the rest at the link)

sw

[Kurovski]

1. K&R.

And now I must away...

:loveya:

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. I hope they don't bury that bastard at Arlington, that would be an insult

to those who died in his War, especially those who died after he had second thoughts.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. His instructions to his wife were

"No funeral, no memorial service."

The lying thug knew what his funeral would bring, even today.

And, after reading Galloway's article, I'm an even bigger fan of David Halberstam than I've been for so many years........................

[dflprincess]

8. Oh darn, I was hoping for a lottery for tickets to his funeral

for those of us who might want to dance on his casket.

[scarletwoman]

12. I just hope the poor worms don't choke.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

17. I am betting that no one will EVER

know where that fucker is buried - if he's buried, or else cremated and hidden somewhere - for fear of the desecration that would take place.

I'd stand it line to spit on his grave. I'd stand for a long, long time, and when got there, I'd do a dance on it.

Then I'd dig it up just to make sure he was dead.

Actually, this almost happened once when a really rotten Federal judge died. We all hated him so much, but by the time we got to the cemetery that night, we had sobered up enough, plus we didn't have a shovel, so the guys just peed on it. They said they were doing to for me by proxy..

Good times................

[Octafish]

3. I take issue with Mr. Galloway on this. McNamara kept the Pentagon at bay as long as he could.

By "Pentagon" I mean the warmongers in the service of the War Party.

Essay - Did the US Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963.

Of course, President Kennedy died trying.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

5. Are you kidding?

McNamara was gung-ho to keep sending more and more troops into that morass.

All that blather today is revisionist crap. He believed, in 1965, that the war could not be won militarily, but stayed silent, and for that, he should rot...........................

[scarletwoman]

9. To me, the worst was that he did not speak up against the Iraq invasion.

When he KNEW it was bullshit.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

11. He was probably afraid to -

I had a friend who was a former Nixon staffer, very much a Republican, a former member of the NSC, who was preparing to speak out against the Iraqi invasion, and then he was found dead, his death written up as a suicide. From the top of his Watergate building. Even though he hated heights. And his obituary was a tiny thing in the Post after he'd been buried.

A lot of people died mysteriously before they managed to speak out..................

[scarletwoman]

13. Geeze. Even so, it doesn't absolve McNamara -- why should his life matter more than all the lives

lost due to his silence?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

15. Just between us (OK, I'm kidding you),

Robert McNamara was not a man given to generous gestures or acting on the courage of his convictions. That's why it was so easy for him to let thousands and thousands of American soldiers die in Viet Nam, and for millions of Vietnamese to be murdered defending their country against American aggression.

McNamara was all about the glory of Robert McNamara, and when that wasn't in the wind, he stayed silent.

He was a coward. Even his instructions to his wife about his death - no funeral, no memorial service - showed that he was afraid, even after his death, of what might happen, what might be said about him.

A truly loathsome man, and Henry Kissinger, who still draws breath, goddammit, is even worse. I'll celebrate that bastard's death with all the joy in me..........................

[scarletwoman]

19. Agh -- Kissinger! Even McNamara is a piker compared to that evil fuck.

I wonder if that evil vampire will ever die! What's the expiration date on pacts with the devil?

I do hope I live long enough to see that walking sack of pestilence cack off. Oh yes, massive unrestrained celebration will definitely be in order upon the demise of Henry Kissinger!

sw

[dflprincess]

14. And he knew Vietnam was bullshit but refused to go public when the light finally dawned

What really pissed me off is that he supposedly told Humphrey that he (McNamara) and McGeorge Bundy would stand up with Hubert if he went public against the war during his presidential campaign, but HHH was either too wrapped up in his own ambition or too frightened of LBJ to do that. Yet McNamara never explained why he and Bundy still didn't go public.

I know Humphrey did a lot of good and he is an icon to many Minnesotans, but I will never forgive him for not standing up to Johnson.

[scarletwoman]

18. Humphrey had his heart in the right place about some important things, but he was also a toady.

"Wrapped up in his own ambition" is an accurate observation, imo. He had no stomach for confronting the MIC.

sw

[Octafish]

28. No. Gen. Lemnitzer and the JCS proposed NUKING the Soviet Union in late 1963

It's something McNamara opposed when JFK was President.

From the link above:

General Lemnitzer stated that the assumption of this year's study was a surprise attack in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions.

Thank Goodness McNamara and LBJ managed to deep-six the idea after Dallas, despite the pressure to link Oswald to Cuba and the USSR.

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. Agent Orange was McNamara's idea

He wanted to defoliate Vietnam.

I hope he rots in hell.

[scarletwoman]

26. What is there to say? Evil, evil, evil, evil...

All that death and destruction -- for what?

[Octafish]

30. McNamara failed to stop war -- that's enough to damn most souls, I imagine.

The former Editor of The Washington Post recalled the moment in a speech he gave:

Ben Bradlee's Speech on Tonkin Gulf

Full text of his 1987 remarks about the lie that sold the Vietnam War.

Posted 26 February 2003
From: The Guardian (London) April 29, 1987

HEADLINE: Deceit and dishonesty - The first James Cameron Memorial Lecture

BYLINE: By BEN BRADLEE

EXCERPT...

Let us talk about the big lies, lies that change history. Two of them have to do with Vietnam, that war that so outraged Jimmy Cameron. Let me take you back to December 1963 and Tansonhut airport in Saigon. At the end of his first fact finding trip to Vietnam for the New American President Lyndon Johnson, the Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was holding a press conference. He told reporters that he was 'optimistic as to the progress that had been made and could be made during the coming year' in the fight against the Vietcong. This was duly reported to an anxious world on that night's television and in next day's newspapers.

Landing at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington next day, he told another press conference: 'We have every reason to believe that (US military plans for 1964) will be successful. ' And he disappeared into a helicopter for the White House lawn, and a one-on-one session with the President in the Oval Office. Also duly reported.

===========================================================

What McNamara really thought

===========================================================

For 7 1/2 years, there was no report of that conversation. Not until July, 1971 and then only after the Nixon administration took the New York Times and the Washington Post all the way to the Supreme Court in a vain effort to keep them from publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers, did we hear what McNamara really felt.

Buried in those Pentagon papers (which so few people ever read) lay the revelation that McNamara had told President Johnson exactly the opposite of what he had told the press and through us, the world, the Secretary of Defence returned from Vietnam 'laden with gloom ' according to documents in the Pentagon papers. 'Vietcong progress had been great,' he reported to the President, 'With my best guess being that the situation has in fact been deteriorating to a far greater extent than we realise. The situation is very disturbing. '

Think for a minute how history could have changed if those comments had been made at Tansonhut airport, if those lies had gone unspoken at Andrews Air Force Base. Reflect on one of the eternal verities of our profession - insufficiently understood by us or by our readers - that the truth, the whole truth, emerges over time, and that's the way its supposed to be, as Lippmann pointed out more than 60 years ago. We don't get it all, the first crack out of the box, for lots of reasons, including the fact that people occasionally lie. It can take a long time to get it all, and get it right.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tenc.net/archive/bradlee.htm

McNamara, as I tried to indicate above, also worked to prevent a greater -- nuclear war with the USSR.

After Dallas, McNamara stayed a team player. Even though the owner changed coaches, he kept doing the coach's bidding.

As for eternal judgement, that's between a person and the Creator.

[malaise]

6. Rachel is discussing now

Bravo Joe Galloway

[Stinky The Clown]

7. I miss Halberstam. His works were very important.

[KoKo]

10. That's some comment from Galloway....!

K&R

[guruoo]

16. "We were wrong" ...

http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/_media/mov/trailer.swf

[scarletwoman]

20. Shameless kick -- for a little variety in GD, ya know...

[Raster]

21. "Poor boys fight rich men's wars and that was Vietnam in a nutshell."

One of the reader's comments:

Cigi wrote on July 7, 8:08 PM:

I don't know where McNamara will end up, but he left a legacy of carnage and division in this country over the Vietnam War. As the wife of the vet, it was one of the most traumatic events that I have lived thorugh in my life time. My husband came back from the war a different man and he never recovered. He fell into booze to forget and eventually we divorced. He died of alcoholism and cynicism. Poor boys fight rich men's wars and that was Vietnam in a nutshell. Our continued lunacy in Iraq and Afghanistan proves that we learn nothing form history.

[scarletwoman]

24. +1 -- Who profits? Who dies?

How long will we keep putting up with this shit?

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. May he rot in hell for an eternity

[scarletwoman]

25. May Kissinger join him soon. (nt)

[Blue_Tires]

27. +1

[WI_DEM]

29. Another one of JFK's "Best and Brightest" who led us into Vietnam.