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Triumph Forsaken The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 by Mark Moyar Cambridge, 542 pp., $32 In the late summer of 1963, President John Kennedy dispatched two observers to South Vietnam. Their mission was to provide the president an assessment of the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of the Republic of Vietnam. The first, Major General Victor Krulak, USMC, the special assistant for counterinsurgency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited some ten locations in all four Corps areas of Vietnam. Based on extensive interviews with U.S. advisers to the South Vietnamese army, Krulak concluded that the war was going well....

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

“For those who remember journalism back in a 1970s heyday they can’t explain to to [sic] the young, [David] Halberstam’s death was not just the death of a hero, it was like the death of the great Hollywood stars—Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable.” So wrote Henry Allen in The Washington Post shortly after the car crash which brought about the melancholy event to which he refers. He reminds us of what a paltry thing, in journalism’s little kingdom, is “just” the death of a hero—at least in comparison with the apotheosis of a celebrity. Halberstam, Hepburn, Gable. When did this...

Author David Halberstam was killed today in a three-car accident in Menlo Park, authorities said.

Author David Halberstam dies in crash By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago SAN FRANCISCO - David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who chronicled the Washington press corps, the Vietnam War generation and baseball, was killed in a car crash early Monday, a coroner said. He was 73. ADVERTISEMENT Halberstam, a New Yorker, was a passenger in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle in Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said. The accident occurred around 10:30 a.m., and the driver of the car carrying Halberstam identified him as the victim,...