Robert McNamara to visit Saloth Sar in Hell
FOXNews.com | Monday, July 06, 2009McNamara was defense secretary from 1961 to 1968. He served under two Presidents: Kennedy & Johnson.
• In 1964, he had been a strong supporter of stepping up U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
• When U.S. naval vessels were allegedly attacked off the North Vietnamese coast in 1964 McNamara lobbied Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
• The war became known as "McNamara's War."
• More than anyone else except possibly President Lyndon Johnson, McNamara became to anti-war critics the symbol of a failed policy.
• At Harvard McNamara once had to flee a student mob through underground utility tunnels.
• McNamara later unsuccessfully advised President Lyndon B. Johnson that the U.S. should try to find a diplomatic rather than a military solution to the war.
• He made several fact-finding visits there in the early days of the U.S. military buildup.
• He predicted American intervention would enable the South Vietnamese to stand by themselves "by the end of 1965." That was an early forerunner of a seemingly endless string of official "light at the end of the tunnel" predictions of American success.
• In late 1967 he criticized the decision to bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes on U.S. bases in the south. Johnson decided to remove him the following year.
• By the time the Vietnam War ended 58,000 Americans had been killed.
• McNamara published a book in 1995 critical of our involvement in Vietnam.
• The book was titled In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam and published by Times Books.
• McNamara placed much of the blame for the mistakes of Vietnam squarely on himself and others in government at the time, including President Johnson.
• In the book, McNamara wrote that he and other U.S. officials had been "wrong, terribly wrong" about Vietnam.
• The best-selling mea culpa renewed the national debate about the war and prompted bitter criticism against its author.
