The death this week of Robert McNamara brought to the fore the two crucial international political issues involving his stewardship as secretary of defense under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

McNamara was forced out of the position by Johnson after his secretary had provided him with responses that conflicted with the president's on the subject of the sharply divisive Vietnam War.  

The former secretary in a revealing biography released in 1993, better than a generation after his Pentagon service, revealed his ultimate belief that the war could not be won.  

The reason why David Halberstam and other American reporters on the Vietnam scene at the time refused to provide McNamara for candor credit after the fact were burning memories of how he questioned the patriotism of their opposition to a war he later conceded to know at that same time to be a lost cause.

I discovered this morning that the Bush presidency is a success.
Boy, was I surprised.

Bill Kristol explains it all in an article at The Washington Post that gets my recommendation for the Fatuous Nonsense of the Week Award.

He opens by admitting that such an assertion may expose him to some "harmless ridicule" and proceeds to offer two pages of proof as to why such ridicule might be justified.

"Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable."

David Halberstam, who died in an automobile accident in Northern California last week, deserves the plaudit of American patriot.  As a young reporter his courage and tenacity under difficult circumstances brought needed truth to America during one of the most troubling periods of American history.

It was understandable that when Halberstam died at 73 that he was in the midst of a project.  An ambitious writer who remained busy, the accident that took his life in Menlo, Park California came as he was being driven to an interview with Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle.  

Halberstam was interviewing Tittle about what many called the greatest game in pro football history, the overtime 23-17 win of the Baltimore Colts over Tittle's team, the New York Giants, in the 1958 championship game in that historic era almost a decade before the Super Bowl made its debut.

In addition to his reporting and historical books, Halberstam had a reverence for sports that saw him write about the famous 1949 pennant race when Joe Dimaggio came off the injury list to lead the New York Yankees to the American League title over Boston and the 1964 World Series in which Bob Gibson pitched the St. Louis Cardinals to the championship over the Yankees.