Kind of like Lincoln. No wonder he’s so reviled.
It was, after all, The War of Northern Aggression!
:smack: My sincere apology, sir.
Isn’t Bush the guy that made the rehabilitation of Nixon a plausible (even if still unlikely) possibility?
I’ve come to realize 2 things while reading this thread:
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I’m apparently a better investigative journalist than Bob Woodward
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I’m waaaaay smarter than magellan01
Honest mistakes, no matter how serious, are distinct from malevolence.
I’ve watched it now … and am totally baffled why you used this film, an interview of McNamara, to make your point. I consider that it confirms my viewpoint. The specific lie often cited, Golf of Tonkin incidents, was explained in the film. If McNamara is to be believed, the first alleged attack by NV did happen; the 2nd was an honest mistake which wasn’t clarified until after Congress acted. Maybe there’s another source claiming McNamara is lying about the first incident, but this obviously isn’t it.
The most interesting parts of the film were audios of LBJ-McNamara conversations. I’d previously read transcripts of other conversations between these two. The picture painted is one of two men being drawn reluctantly, and for different reasons, into bad decisions leading to a gradually escalating war. This is the polar opposite of the Cheney-Bush War, where leaders raced happily and heedlessly into full war.
The Vietnam War was stupid, mistaken and, yes, immoral in the sense that most wars abound with immorality. The way McNamara passes the buck (“I was pursuing the policies of an elected President”) can be condemned. But I find the motives for Vietnam War and the Invasion of Iraq to be completely opposite.
Where John Mace and I differ is on the “sincerity of motives” of Cheney and Bush. If after all the evidence that’s been presented, and observing the hideous aftermath of the War, Mace views Cheney-Bush as fundamentally “sincere”, I’m afraid I’m too flabbergasted to attempt a rebuttal.
It beats admitting that no, they don’t both do it.
Well, they certainly teed me off.
I recall British joke dating from the W Admin: “George Washington was the president who could not tell a lie, Richard Nixon was the president who could not tell the truth, and George W. Bush is the president who cannot tell the difference.”
Certainly older than that. It was told about Jimmy Carter, and may well go back farther.
Not much farther than Gerald Ford, if Nixon is to remain as the second example.
I searched, trying to see if a different version was on record. George Washington couldn’t tell a lie…John Adams couldn’t tell the truth…and Thomas Jefferson couldn’t tell the difference, etc. No joy.
I did find a 1901 instance of “Pro and Con are prefixes of opposite meaning, as in Progress and Congress.”
Forthcoming threads along the same lines as this one:
Pro-vaccination Dopers: who is a better Doctor, you or Andrew Wakefield?
Anti-Ponzi-scheme Dopers: who is a better fund manager, you or Bernie Madoff?
“I am, when I’m in command of my faculties and Bob Woodward is not.”