Commentary: Galloway on McNamara: Reading An Obit With Great Pleasure

Commentary: Galloway on McNamara: Reading an obit with great pleasure
By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." — Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.

Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McNamara while doing research for my book We Were Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process." Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they were not bald-faced lies.Read more.