Posted on 07/06/2009 6:21:18 AM PDT by DFG
Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has died.
McNamara, 93, died at home in his sleep Monday morning, his wife Diana told The Associated Press. She said he had been in failing health for some time.
Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was president of the Ford Motor Co. when President John F. Kennedy asked him to head the Pentagon in 1961.
McNamara worked for seven years as the defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, longer than any other person in that post. He headed the war department during the build-up of forces in Vietnam.
He is considered the architect of the concept of "mutual assured destruction," a key feature of the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The Architect of Defeat in Vietnam.
You are happy he led the defeat of a war you fought in? Bizzare.
some of you sound like DU’er talking about Dick Cheney. Maybe I only see the parallel because I didn’t live through the 60s. And my experiance locking horns with some nutty liberals on campus in Athens. Hate is their trademark. But, it is important we hold ourselves to a higher standard.
No tears here.............
The average IQ of the country just went up a lot.
I wish him no evil, but I don’t give a smelly Obama about his death.
Next up Kissinger. Between these two, thousands of our Military died or were maimed for a cause these two helped negate. Their egos trumped lives!
Barry M. Goldwater once said McNamara was the most dishonest man he ever met. Then he changed his mind and said that person was really Richard M. Nixon .
Yes, but he had Everett McKinley Dirksen helping him pick the targets!
McNamara was responsible for the deaths of 50,000 young Americans and countless Vietnamese, both North and South......
McNamara’s 100,000..
Has to be the WORST idea in the annals of American Military History.
Well at least he won’t be going to the same place that the thousands that he helped send to an early end went to.
If there is justice, him and LBJ are battling ‘fires’ now.
No loss to the country..
Sorry, disagree completely.
Some incompetence and wrongdoing deserves to see the light of day. A man’s death does not exonerate nor, in those extreme situations, should it be reason to in any way excuse or ignore these transgressions.
ping
******************
Johnson? The man was a socialist. I doubt that he loved this country, yes.
Speak for yourself, hand wringer.
Do you think Johnson enjoyed the Viet Nam war ? Again, I didn’t live through the 60s. But as a 23 year old. I could go over to DU and read the same comments about Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and even Reagan.
we are better than this
McNamara is responsible for too many deaths to be mourned. He came up with one of the worst war strategies in human history, a strategy that managed to be both incapable of winning and incapable of losing and thus turned the war into a meat grinder. He might have been a patriot, but the blood on his hands would make even Lady Macbeth cringe.
Saddam Hussein loved his country, so did Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, and Ho Chi Minh, even Adolph Hitler. It didn't make them "feel pain" ... whether saints or monsters, people need to be judged for their actions despite what is BC (Biblical Correct). I am sorry for Robert S. McNamara's family but I don't grieve his death; he was one of the worst SECDEF's in history...second only to Simon Cameron. His and LBJ's decisions to suspend (limited warfare) instead of carrying on the successful "Rolling Thunder" (which Nixon mirrored in "Linebacker II" to force the N.V.A. regime to the peace table) resulted to stymie a winnable war and cost American lives.
Wanna hear something funny? At one time the FAA had a quota hire woman in a very high position who suggested putting odometers on aircraft! True story.
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