McNamara's 'other' crimes: the stories you haven't heard

Washington Monthly ^ | June, 1995 | Myra MacPherson

[SLB]

Just the tip of the Johnson and McNamara iceberg.

[SLB]

Guess we should turn the other cheek?

[Welcome2thejungle]

Whoever came up with McNamara’s middle name had the right idea.

[Uri’el-2012]

Let the dead rest!

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

[fish hawk]

So that is how Forrest Gump and Buba both got into the Viet Nam war.

[papasmurf]

Kennedy gets no pass on this. Especially Kennedy!

[Jolla]

Have a family/friends that toured the world this year, they are French and were excited to go to Viet Nam, it was the most disappointing stop on the tour. The Vietnamese are 100% into handouts and want to do nothing. A Parisian Vietnamese that now goes back every year for a couple of months confirms - money is all his cousins have any interest in.

[TCats]

No turning the other cheek here. And his death does not exonerate him from the thousands of lives he, Johnson and Kissinger destroyed in their Ego driven incompetence.

I for one am glad he is gone. Next up Mr. Kissinger, the game playing incompetent he was and is. His insecurities and games cost much. Too much to be forgiven as is the case with McNamara.

[SLB]

Let the dead rest!

Why?

[fish hawk]

So the left wants to prosecute Cheney and Bush for war crimes and they let a real criminal slip through the cracks.

[tet68]

I was a member of the origional group to sue, before it
was made a class action. In the end most veterans got nothing.
As someone I knew then who was dying of cancer said,
“I died in Vietnam, and didn’t even know it.”

I shed no tears for Mcnamara.

[llevrok]

I hope Mac rots in Hell for his incompetence and ego that led to so many troops who died to cover those weaknesses.

[Uri’el-2012]

U-2012>Let the dead rest!

Why?

Look up Yah'shua is coming soon.

Trashing the dead gains you nothing.

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The NYT and WaPost havbe rewritten the Viet Nam story. It was all Nixon’s doing...

[RVN Airplane Driver]

That miserable SOB along with Johnson and their insane war planning is the reason that I have some dear friends names on the wall. In honor of them I will find out where he is buried and give him a martini bath after I run it through my system first!

[Vinnie]

And let’s not forget the TFX multi-force fighter boondoggle.
Waaaaaaay too heavy for carrier use.

Finally turned into the F-111.

It was his baby and mess.

[atomic conspiracy]

“I shed no tears for Mcnamara.”

Me neither. He was a monster and a criminal in every respect; an arrogant and profoundly callous intellectual who had his own bizarre notions of how to get things done, and who persisted with them in defiance of experience, history, and an avalanche of facts.
This story doesn’t just need to be told now, it needs to be told a thousand years from now. It is a universal warning about the hubris of power and status.

[colorado tanker]

It was Kennedy, Johnson and McNamara who got us into Vietnam and then hamstrung the troops with their insane rules putting most of North Vietnam off limits.

The Dems and media can try to shift the blame to Nixon, but facts are facts and Nixon took office years after McNamara did this.

[US Navy Vet]

Walter Cronkite and Robert McNamera DEAD, couldn’t be better!

[Retired COB]

We called it the Idiot Program. I had three of these people working for me after my Viet Nam tour. They were unbelievably stupid. I used two of them as drivers delivering parts to the flight line.

One of them got out of the delivery van and forgot to put it into Park. Of course the truck drifted into my 1968 Chevelle SS convertible!

After that one was fixed, the second one was driving a forklift with a jet engine in a can (forward so he couldn't see where he was going through the engine can) and you'd never guess who's 1968 Chevelle SS convertible he hit.

The third guy was actually pretty smart. He didn't want to go to Viet Nam, and he didn't want to serve four years in the Navy or Air Force to get out of being cannon fodder. The Idiot Program allowed him to enlist for two years with no possibility of re-enlisting, and no Viet Nam deployment (Navy).

I was not a fan of McNamara. I did not and do not believe it's a smart move to put an accountant in charge of our military forces. He tried to micromanage so much that our shipboard commanders finally had to resort to sending "Unless otherwise directed I intend to fire a salvo of 45 rounds of 8 inch naval gunfire at co-ordinates ####### at 0145Z." These messages would be sent minutes prior to providing gunfire support to comply with the requirements to get permission to fire, but not be too late to help the troops.

I'll never understand how this man's ego let him believe that he knew more about military tactics than graduates of West Point and Annapolis.