It amazes me that supposedly bright reasonable people would be the least bit surprised that Von Braun would say such things about such topics. He was certainly tops in his field and floated routinely amongst folks in the know about such things. No big surprise in that. Rather logical.
And rather basic.
Don't misunderstand me. I think von Braun was a brilliant engineer and NASA was lucky to get their hands on him before the Russians did, thank you US Army. It's just the little grey men thing that has piqued my curiosity. I won't deny the very likely possibility that intelligent life exists outside of this Earth, but at the same time, an interstellar war is a reach, although I expect that the DUhmmies and Kos crowd, not to mention the RATS in Congress, will blame it all on Dubya if it ever happened.