Robert McNamara, former defense secretary and architect of the U.S. strategy in Vietnam, has died, according to the Washington Post.
McNamara was 93 years old. He was in the news in recent years tearfully expressing regrets about Vietnam and admitting that much of U.S. policy there was based on lies. There are volumes of information about his life available, so I'll not add anything to that, just putting news out that I've not yet seen on Kos.
UPDATE: The Post has now published a five-page obit. The story mentions David Halberstam's brilliant The Best and the Brightest. I recall rereading that in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and being struck by the remarkable similarities in thinking that drove McNamara and were driving the Bush Admin.
The Post piece quotes Halberstam on McNamara:
"a prisoner of his own background . . . unable, as indeed was the country which sponsored him, to adapt his values and his terms to Vietnamese realities. Since any real indices and truly factual estimates of the war would immediately have shown its bankruptcy, the McNamara trips became part of a vast unwitting and elaborate charade, the institutionalizing and legitimizing of a hopeless lie."
Vietnam ... Iraq ... always about legitimizing a hopeless lie. At least McNamara had the decency, far too late, to apologize. I doubt we'll ever see that from Rumsfeld, Rove or Cheney.
UPDATE 2: Great comments. Thanks for the various links mentioned. Here are a few:Wikipedia
Secretaries of Defense bios
NNDB bio
World Bank bio
Oh, and the bios reminded me of something I'd forgotten: the S in Robert S. McNamara was for Strange. I kid you not.