MUHAMMAD ALI'S LEGACY; PROUD POWERFUL BLACK MAN ("VIET CONG")

MUHAMMAD ALI'S LEGACY; PROUD POWERFUL BLACK MAN:

"NO VIET CONG EVER CALLED ME NIGGER".

ALI LEFT SOME BIG SHOES TO FILL.

WHERE ARE THE PROUD POWERFUL BLACK MEN OF TODAY?

Sources: ESPN, NY Times, Youtube

Muhammad Ali formerly known as Cassius Marcellus Clay, was born in January 1942, and died in June 2016 at the age of 74.

Ali converted to the ISLAMIC faith in 1964 and remained a devout Muslim until his death.

Ali was married four times and fathered nine children who loved and respected their Father very much.

Ali was an intelligent professional Boxer who lost and won back his title three times.

After developing a personal friendship with the late Sportscaster Howard Cosell, Ali became an international figure.

Throughout his life Muhammad Ali stood strong by his Convictions, including his refusal to fight in the Vietnam war after publicly declaring "No Viet Cong ever called me Nigger".

Although I don't agree with all of Muhammad Ali's personal life and religious decisions, I will forever respect Ali for being a Proud Powerful BLACK Man, who never sold out his people for Money nor Fame.

Muhammad Ali most certainly deserves to REST IN PEACE.

I send my prayers and condolences to the surviving family of Muhammad Ali.

***** Ali's legacy outlives him, but must be considered in 

THERE IS, EVEN in the sadness of his death, little reason to think about Muhammad Ali in the gauzy past tense, to remember him through the lens of pre-color-film footage, except to beam at those hands, marvel at the foot speed, linger on the unblemished supremacy of his youth with all its beauty and foreshadowing.

Otherwise, we need only rise each morning to see him, for Ali feels very much present today as he was during his time. Too many contemporary parallels exist to look backward.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., Ali was once one of the most hated men in America, and like MLK, he would decades later be co-opted by many of the very people who hated him (though a young Ali would be as despised today as he was in the 1960s).

It is the lonely walk of the original, of the dissenter, and it knows no era. He was hated by white America for his unsparing criticism of its obvious, enduring racism, a conversation no more welcome today than it was in 1963. He was hated by blacks and whites alike for challenging the military, for questioning the necessity, morality and inherent racism of war, and in response the American government used its full weight to try to destroy him. He was hated for challenging Christianity as a Muslim in America, yet in death he is mourned as if yesterday's struggle has been long resolved and defiance is no longer necessary.

When recast, Ali is so often dipped in the notion that he "transcended" race, which is pure and unadulterated nonsense. There was nothing for Ali to transcend racially. To him, blackness was no obstacle but central to his identity. His loyalty to being black made him both reviled by whites and luminescent to the black people desperate for his presence, for the African-American admission fee to acceptance and fame has always been the erasure of their color, to abandon it lest they be seen as threatening or difficult, angry or ungrateful. The white ticket buyers and image makers must be comfortable, and the black price for their comfort is reducing the core of oneself or risking the inevitable brand-threatening mainstream rage, or worse: being accused of playing the dreaded "race card," as if humiliation were a game easily turned into advantage with the right strategy. Creating distance from race is the key to mainstream black advancement; the pathway to future acceptance is unattainable without that surrender. Ali rejected this fantasy. He did not transcend race. He took his blackness with him.

Said Ali: "Money means nothing to me nor boxing when it comes to the freedom of your people. So everything I'm doing, if it means hitchhike tomorrow, if it means being raggedy, if it means look for a job, I'll be happy because I can go to bed, my conscience is clear and I didn't sell out or trade my people just because I could be rich in Hollywood."

So much of him lives today, including his darkest side. His worst moments were in his racial cruelty toward rival Joe Frazier. He was quicker mentally, better with words than Frazier, and whether for promotion or mental advantage, he used his better looks and lighter skin to exploit the racial stereotypes that saddle black men everywhere. He knew the implications of calling another black man a "gorilla," and he did it anyway.

What Ali did transcend was the conventions of modern celebrity by remaining a human. He could love the black and the brown around the world and, through the force of his humanity, bend the historical resistance to him over the final 40 years of his life. He could be rich and still be one of the poor. He knew the price for his beliefs, the price of not abandoning his people for fame or money, and was still willing to pay it in full.

Most of America will remember him safely, by separating Ali from its current self, allowing it to be magnanimous and him to be unthreatening. It will admire his religious conviction without recognizing our collective hostility toward Muslims. It will honor his courage, yet discourage us from questioning, as he did, the wars we fight, the government that spies on us or the fact that we forget our poor. It will celebrate his defiance while defiance is precisely what our increasingly intolerant culture is going out of its way to crush.

There is no reason to look backward, for Ali lives presently in the air we breathe. What is past is prologue.

VETERANS vs FORCED PSYCH EVALUATIONS (DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SUICIDE PREVENTION)

@Veterans

VETERANS vs FORCED PSYCH EVALUATIONS (DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SUICIDE PREVENTION):

WHAT ARE PRES OBAMA & CONGRESS DOING TO CURB DOMESTIC VIOLENCE STATISTICS AMONG US MILITARY VETS?

Sources: Daily Beast, Do Something, Military Times,  Youtube

~ Highlights:

Each day more than 22 US Military Vets commit acts of Suicide.

There is also a growing epidemic of Domestic Violence in the homes of US Military Vets.

If Vets lose a close family member (Son or Daughter) to SUICIDE, why aren't they required by the VA Dept of Veterans Affairs to attend Mental Health Counseling within 72 hours of the occurrence?

Why aren't Vets and Retired US Military Soldiers required to forgo annual Psychiatric Evaluations (Mental Health Check-ups) to continue receiving their Pension Checks and other VA Benefits?

Why is it that State VA Hospitals don't work together to prevent US Military Vets from avoiding required Mental Health Check-ups when those Vets re-locate to a new state?

WAR Is Hell!

The effects of WAR on the Human Mind is often long term Mental Hell and Pain.

Our Vets need Prayer but many of our Vets also need Mental Health Counseling.

Why does it appear as if America's leaders have forsaken our dedicated, Honorable, hardworking US Military troops?

God Forbid.

******  11 Facts About the Mental Health of Our Troops

1. Depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (aka PTSD, an anxiety disorder that follows experiencing a traumatic event) are the most common mental health problems faced by returning troops.
2. The most common symptoms of PTSD include: difficulty concentrating, lack of interest/apathy, feelings of detachment, loss of appetite, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, and sleep disturbances (lack of sleep, oversleeping.
3. Post-traumatic stress disorder is diagnosed after several weeks of continued symptoms.
4. In about 11 to 20% of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom) have been diagnosed with PTSD. Create a support board so your friends can show leave messages of encouragement for troops suffering from PTSD and other illnesses. Sign up for Support Board.
5. 30% of soldiers develop mental problems within 3 to 4 months of being home.

6. 55% of women and 38% of men report being victim to sexual harassment while serving in the military
7. Because there are more men than women in the military, more than half of all veterans experiencing military sexual trauma (MST) are men.
8. An estimated 20% of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans turn to heavy drinking or drugs once they return to the US.
9. Between 10 and 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Possible consequences of this internal injury include anger, suicidal thoughts, and changes in personality.
10. In 2010, an average of 22 veterans committed suicide every day. The group with the highest number of suicides was men ages 50 to 59.
11. Some groups of people, including African-Americans and Hispanics, may be more likely than whites to develop PTSD.

Chris Hayes Denies Fallen Soldiers Are Heroes; What The???

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CHRIS HAYES UNCOMFORTABLE WITH CALLING TROOPS 'HEROES;' QUITE COMFORTABLE EXERCISING RIGHTS THEY PROTECT

Just in time for Memorial Day, some MSNBC drone named Chris Hayes has lit up the internet with his confession that dead American troops don’t quite measure up to his exacting standards for what qualifies as a “hero.”

Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote.

Though he may be shocked to hear it, America’s fighting men and women don’t care whether Chris Hayes considers their fallen comrades heroes or not.

First, there’s the practical matter that almost no one – in uniform or out – watches MSNBC or the roster of progressive meat puppets that fill the short stretches between endless reruns of "Lock Up."

Care about Chris Hayes’s comfort level? They don’t even know this leftist twerp exists.

But on a deeper level, our troops don’t do what they do to impress the likes of Chris Hayes – though he is perfectly willing to make his living in the shadow of their sacrifice. In the scheme of things, Chris Hayes’s views are important only as an object lesson in what our progressive elites really think about our military. And it’s not much.

So what did he say? Mediaite provides a transcript of his weaselly insights:
I feel… uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.

Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that.

But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.
No maybe about it, Chris. I love the “rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war” part – he sounds like one of my commie grad students trying to impress credulous freshman girls after a choom session in the quad.

But Chris Hayes seems to cultivate a more hipster vibe – no ponytail for him, but I’ll bet that lurking under his blazer is a really cool tat that signals to the world he’s edgy.

And what’s edgier than taking on our troops? After all, at least until the next election, they are “our” troops. Even most progressives – quite willing to diss our troops before while Bush was president -- are on message these days.

After all, it’s kinda hard to shout about warmongering, baby-killing imperialists when the guy commanding them is your own guy.

I greatly enjoy watching progressives seethe as they are forced, for the sake of appearances, to pretend to support our troops. You know it’s killing them.

But it’s the progressives’ own doing – their sickening performance following the Vietnam War, where they figuratively and literally spit on our troops – so disgusted decent Americans of all political stripes that to do anything but treat our troops with the utmost respect is to draw near-universal contempt and scorn from across the mainstream political spectrum.

So, the real problem for Chris Hayes is that he actually said what he thinks.

He thinks our soldiers are suckers and fools at best, brutal sociopaths at worst.

At a minimum, he feels that honoring those who died for this country might encourage people to see that actually defending our country is a good thing. He’s not quite ready to make that leap; after all, most progressives are ambivalent about this whole “America” concept, if not actively opposed to it.

Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but when progressives attempt it, it’s comedy gold.

So, like so many other useless progressive fops who glide from cocktail party to panel discussion, Chris Hayes continues to push his progressive vision of collectivist serfdom from behind the unbreachable wall of American warriors.

He has not stood with them and, in fact, is unworthy of doing so. He is a parasite taking sustenance from the exertions of better men and women.

And even if those men and women know who Chris Hayes is, they wouldn’t give a half damn about what he thinks. They don’t do it for him.



MSNBC host Chris Hayes says he has trouble calling fallen soldiers 'heroes,’ sparks controversy

An MSNBC host is dodging attacks after arguing he was “uncomfortable” calling fallen soldiers “heroes.”

Chris Hayes made the remark on Sunday, the eve of Memorial Day, on his show, “Up With Chris Hayes.”

“I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war,” Hayes said.

He added that “there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers,” but that “it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic.”

On Monday, a top veterans group called for Hayes to apologize.

“Chris Hayes’ recent remarks on MSNBC regarding our fallen service members are reprehensible and disgusting,” said Richard DeNoyer, National Commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars, to FOX News.

“His words reflect his obvious disregard for the service and sacrifice of the men and women who have paid the ultimate price while defending our nation. His insipid statement is particularly callous because it comes at a time when our entire nation pauses to reflect and honor the memory of our nations’ fallen heroes.”

Online, critics were no less harsh.

“Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote,” wrote Breitbart’s Kurt Schlichter.

Schlichter accused Hayes of making the comment to prove he’s “edgy.”

“And what’s edgier than taking on our troops?”

Political pundit Ann Coulter mocked Hayes on Twitter:

“Chris Hayes ‘Uncomfortable’ Calling Fallen Military ‘Heroes’ – Marines respond by protecting his right to menstruate,” she wrote.

The only defense of Hayes’ comment appeared to come from Hayes himself.

The host took to Twitter to urge followers to watch the entire hour of the show before jumping to conclusions. He also directed them to another one of his show’s segments, in which he discusses how the relationship most Americans have to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is, for the most part, abstract.


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Sources: Breitbart.com, CBS News, MSNBC, NBC, NY Daily News, Google Maps

Obama: "Vietnam War Vets Too Often Denigrated & Unappreciated"

Obama says Vietnam Veterans too often 'Denigrated'

President Barack Obama paid tribute Monday to the men and women who have died defending America, singling out Vietnam veterans as an under-appreciated and sometimes maligned group of war heroes and vowing that "it will not happen again."

"You were sometimes blamed for the misdeeds of a few," Obama said. "You came home and were sometimes denigrated when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened."

Marking Memorial Day at both the Vietnam War Memorial and earlier at Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River from the capital, Obama noted that for the first time in nine years, "Americans are not fighting and dying in Iraq," and the nation was winding down its role in the conflict in Afghanistan.

"After a decade under the dark cloud of war, we can see the light of the new day on the horizon," Obama said to an audience gathered at the Arlington amphitheater lined with American flags under a warm, brilliant sun.

In this election year, Obama said the nation must remain committed to providing for the families of fallen soldiers and help returning service members seeking a job, higher education or health care benefits.

"As long as I'm president, we will make sure you and your loved ones will receive the benefits you've earned and the respect you deserve," Obama said. "America will be there for you."

Obama said sending troops into harm's way was "the most wrenching decision that I have to make. And I can promise you I will never do so unless it's absolutely necessary."

At the Vietnam War Memorial, Obama said of the veterans of that war served with "just as much patriotism and honor as any before you."

"When you came home, I know many of you put your medals away," he said. "You didn't talk too much about your service. As a consequence, the nation didn't always appreciate the chapter that came next." He said that although many Americans turned their back on Vietnam veterans, "you never turned your back on America."

As he seeks re-election, Obama has reminded audiences about the end of the war in Iraq and the move to bring all troops home from Afghanistan by 2014. And in a campaign ad released last week, he credits U.S. servicemen who helped in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, meantime, promised to maintain an American military "with no comparable power anywhere in the world."

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee appeared with Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the GOP's 2008 presidential candidate, before a crowd in San Diego crowd estimated at 5,000 in what was billed as a Memorial Day service, not a campaign event. But Romney nevertheless drew clear contrasts with Obama.

The former Massachusetts governor warned against shrinking America's military in Europe's image and said the nation must have the world's strongest military to win wars and prevent them.

A Bureau of Labor Statistics report in March found that 12.1 percent of U.S. Armed Forces veterans who served on active duty after September 2001 were unemployed in 2011. The unemployment rate for all veterans was 8.3 percent.

Veterans could play a significant role in the 2012 election. Exit polls in 2008 showed that Obama was supported by about 44 percent of voters who said they served in the military, while 54 percent voted for McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war for more than five years during the Vietnam War.

A poll released Monday by Gallup found that 58 percent of veterans support Romney and 34 percent back Obama. The results were based on a sample of 3,327 veterans who are registered voters and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Several closely watched states in the election have large blocs of military voters. Florida, home to several military installations, has more than 1.6 million veterans, according to the Veterans Administration.

Pennsylvania has nearly 1 million veterans, while Virginia and North Carolina each have about 800,000 veterans living in their states.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama started the day with a breakfast at the White House for families who have lost loved ones in combat.


Sources: AP, PBS News, Yahoo News, Youtube

Veterans Suicide Numbers Increase, Yet Congress Ignores This Epidemic: PTSD (Videos)

The V.A.’s Shameful Betrayal

THE Department of Veterans Affairs, already under enormous strain from the aging of the Vietnam generation, the end of the Iraq war and the continuing return of combat troops from Afghanistan, announced in April that it would increase its mental health staff by about 10 percent. But too many veterans waging a lonely and emotional struggle to resume a normal life continue to find the agency a source of disappointment rather than healing.

The new hiring is intended to address the infuriating delay veterans face in getting appointments. The V.A. says it tries to complete full mental health evaluations within 14 days of an initial screening. But a review by the department’s inspector general found that schedulers were entering misleading information into their computer system. They were recording the next available appointment date as the patient’s desired appointment date. As a result, a veteran who might have had to wait weeks for an appointment would appear in the computer system as having been seen “without a wait.” That allowed the agency to claim that the two-week target was being reached in 95 percent of cases, when the real rate was 49 percent. The rest waited an average of 50 days.

As a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I found that news maddening. While the schedulers played games with the numbers, veterans were dealing with mental wounds so serious that getting proper attention at the right time might have made the difference between life and death. Even worse was that the V.A. had failed twice before to change; the inspector general found similar problems in 2005 and in 2007. This suggests a systematic misrepresentation of data and an unwillingness to stop it.

Unfortunately, the problem goes even deeper. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of veterans who are struggling with post-combat mental health issues who never ask the V.A. for help. Some, hamstrung by fear of stigma, are too proud or too ashamed to ask for help. Others don’t ask because they’ve heard too many stories from peers who have received poor care or been ignored.

I have close friends who could no longer drive because of their lingering fears of roadside bombs. Others had gone to the V.A. because they had suicidal thoughts, only to receive a preliminary screening, a pat on the back, a prescription for antidepressants — and a follow-up appointment for several months later.

I’ve had my own struggle: in 2001 I was part of the initial force of Marines who landed in Afghanistan, and in 2003 took part in the heavy fighting of the first wave of the invasion of Iraq. Since coming home, I’ve had my mind hijacked by visions of the corpses of children, their eyes blackened, at the side of the road. I recall carrying the coffins of fallen brothers. I remember losing friends who probably knew exactly what was happening to them, as they bled out on the side of a dusty road in Iraq.

And I’ve felt the shame of having suicidal feelings. Like many others, I chose to hide them. Yet, even in the darkest days of my own post-traumatic stress, when I was considering choosing between making my suicide look like an accident or taking a swan dive off some beautiful bridge, I never considered going to the V.A. for help.

My image of the V.A., formed while I was on active duty, was of an ineffective, uncaring institution. Tales circulated among my fellow Marines of its institutional indifference, and those impressions were confirmed when I left Iraq for home. At Camp Pendleton, Calif., a woman with a cold, unfeeling manner assembled us for a PowerPoint presentation and pointed us to brochures — nothing more, no welcoming sign of warmth or empathy for the jumble of emotions we were feeling. Her remoteness spoke volumes to me of what I might expect at home.

To regain veterans’ trust, the V.A. must change its organization and culture, not just hire more people. First, its leadership must be held accountable for employees’ behavior, and anyone caught entering misleading data should be fired. The agency must reach out, with public awareness campaigns and with warmth, to veterans who may be suffering in silence. It must help reduce the social stigma that attaches to the mental health issues the veterans face.

Dedicated V.A. personnel run a suicide-prevention hot line, but it is only a temporary salve for emergencies. One impressive and highly effective alternative to the V.A.’s traditional treatment process is the Wounded Warrior Project’s Combat Stress Recovery Program, which emphasizes the importance of interpersonal relationships, goal-setting and outdoor, rehabilitative retreats and seeks to avoid the stigma associated with traditional treatment.

What this generation of veterans needs from the V.A. is a recognition that when the color of life has faded to gray, you need to talk to someone about it today, not weeks or months from now. We need America to acknowledge what war does to the young men and women who fight it and to share the message that dragged me out of the darkness: It’s O.K. if you’re not O.K.



U.S. must address suicides by Military Veterans

As we recall those who gave their lives for our freedoms on this Memorial Day, here’s something to consider: More veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have died by their own hand than died from enemy fire.

The shocking statistic comes straight from the Department of Veterans Affairs: 18 military veterans commit suicide every day. The youngest, between the ages of 17 and 24, are four times more likely to kill themselves than older veterans. To make the numbers even more agonizing, the men and women who fight for our freedoms have never been more isolated from their countrymen: less than 1 percent of the population has served in the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s an unacceptable state of affairs. “We don’t do a good job of understanding the reality of their lives and connecting them to services they need,” said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. More than half the people who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have been part-time warriors, returning to jobs as teachers, construction workers, police and firefighters.

“You’re plucked from civilian life, go into war zone, then you get a 30-day transition back to your regular job,” Andrews said. “That’s not a lot of time to find out about programs to deal with problems, like stress. We need to figure out better ways to get them plugged into services.”

About 17 percent of homeless people are veterans. Others have returned home and devolved into drug addiction or erupted into violence. You’d think the Veterans Administration would figure out how to deliver the best mental health care to these veterans, and fast.

But just last month, a report by the administration’s inspector general revealed disarray and disorganization in exactly this department: The VA did not provide timely mental health evaluations and existing patients often waited more than two weeks for treatment. VA officials say they are hiring 1,900 more mental health specialists and support staff to strengthen its mental health network.

But local initiatives and outreach are crucial, too. Gov. Chris Christie already has announced that the recently closed Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital will be transformed into a 100-bed transitional facility for homeless veterans. Andrews said county offices in New Jersey, most of which have a veterans office, distribute information at street fairs and other local events. “Stand Downs” — where veterans volunteer to help connect other veterans to drug rehab, jobs and housing — also have been effective. But more needs to be done.

A fitting Memorial Day tribute will be honoring those who died for their country and recommitting ourselves to the well-being of those veterans who, invisibly, struggle quietly among us.



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Sources: AP, CBS News, CNN, NJ.com, NY Times, Russia Today, Youtube, Google Maps

Muhammad Ali vs Vietnam War Draft: "Got Nothing Against No Viet Cong"

"Got nothing against no Viet cong, no Vietnamese ever called me a nigger."
Muhammad Ali



I am Not Opposed to War. Instead I am Opposed to Unnecessary Wars. i.e., Iraq & Afghanistan, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs.



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Sources: Youtube, Google Maps

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara Dead At 93..."Fog Of War" Lessons

MSNBC, Huffington Post----

(An extract from an interview with Robert S McNamara who was Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam war. From "The Fog of War" .)



(Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara offers lessons learned from his time in Washington D.C. His is a voice worth listening to. Its really sad that wisdom like he is offering was not employed before the Invasion of Iraq by American and British forces.)



(Fog of War Lesson #9- The Paradox of Good and Evil In War.)




WASHINGTON - Robert S. McNamara, the cerebral secretary of defense who was vilified for prosecuting the Vietnam War, then devoted himself to helping the world's poorest nations, died Monday. He was 93.

McNamara died at 5:30 a.m. at his home, his wife, Diana, told The Associated Press. She said he had been in failing health for some time. His death was first reported Monday by the Washington Post.

For all his healing efforts, McNamara was fundamentally associated with the Vietnam War, "McNamara's war," the country's most disastrous foreign venture, the only American war to end in abject withdrawal rather than victory.

Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was recruited to run the Pentagon by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 from the presidency of the Ford Motor Co. He stayed seven years, longer than anyone since the job's creation in 1947.

Son against Father's war:

His association with Vietnam became intensely personal. Even his son, as a Stanford University student, protested against the war while his father was running it.

At Harvard, McNamara once had to flee a student mob through underground utility tunnels. Critics mocked McNamara mercilessly; they made much of the fact that his middle name was "Strange."

After leaving the Pentagon on the verge of a nervous breakdown, McNamara became president of the World Bank and devoted evangelical energies to the belief that improving life in rural communities in developing countries was a more promising path to peace than the buildup of arms and armies.

A private person, McNamara for many years declined to write his memoirs, to lay out his view of the war and his side in his quarrels with his generals. In the early 1990s he began to open up. He told Time magazine in 1991 that he did not think the bombing of North Vietnam — the biggest bombing campaign in history up to that time — would work but he went along with it "because we had to try to prove it would not work, number one, and (because) other people thought it would work."

Finally, in 1993, after the Cold War ended, he undertook to write his memoirs because some of the lessons of Vietnam were applicable to the post-Cold War period "odd as though it may seem."

"In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" appeared in 1995. McNamara disclosed that by 1967 he had deep misgivings about Vietnam — by then he had lost faith in America's capacity to prevail over a guerrilla insurgency that had driven the French from the same jungled countryside.

Despite those doubts, he had continued to express public confidence that the application of enough American firepower would cause the Communists to make peace. In that period, the number of U.S. casualties — dead, missing and wounded — went from 7,466 to over 100,000.

"We were terribly wrong"

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country. But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong," McNamara, then 78, told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the book's release.

The best-selling mea culpa renewed the national debate about the war and prompted bitter criticism against its author.

"Where was he when we needed him?" a Boston Globe editorial asked. A New York Times editorial referred to McNamara as offering the war's dead only a "prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late."

McNamara wrote that he and others had not asked the five most basic questions: Was it true that the fall of South Vietnam would trigger the fall of all Southeast Asia? Would that constitute a grave threat to the West's security? What kind of war — conventional or guerrilla — might develop? Could we win it with U.S. troops fighting alongside the South Vietnamese? Should we not know the answers to all these questions before deciding whether to commit troops?

He discussed similar themes in the 2003 documentary "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara." With the U.S. in the first year of the war in Iraq, it became a popular and timely art-house attraction and won the Oscar for best documentary feature.

Likened to Rumsfeld:

The Iraq war, with its similarities to Vietnam, at times brought up McNamara's name, in many cases in comparison with another unpopular defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. McNamara was among former secretaries of defense and state who met twice with President George W. Bush in 2006 to discuss Iraq war policies.

In the Kennedy administration, McNamara was a key figure in both the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis 18 months later. The crisis was the closest the world came to a nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.

McNamara served as the World Bank president for 12 years. He tripled its loans to developing countries and changed its emphasis from grandiose industrial projects to rural development.

After retiring in 1981, he championed the causes of nuclear disarmament and aid by the richest nation for the world's poorest. He became a global elder statesman.

McNamara's trademarks were his rimless glasses and slicked down hair and his reliance on quantitative analysis to reach conclusions, calmly promulgated in a husky voice.

He was born June 9, 1916, in San Francisco, son of the sales manager for a wholesale shoe company. At the University of California at Berkeley, he majored in mathematics, economics and philosophy.

As a professor at the Harvard Business School when World War II started, he helped train Army Air Corps officers in cost-effective statistical control. In 1943, he was commissioned an Army officer and joined a team of young officers who developed a new field of statistical control of supplies.

Known as the whiz kids:

McNamara and his colleagues sold themselves to the Ford organization as a package and revitalized the company. The group became known as the "whiz kids" and McNamara was named the first Ford president who was not a descendant of Henry Ford.

A month later, the newly elected Kennedy invited McNamara, a registered Republican, him to join his Cabinet. Taking the $25,000-a-year job cost McNamara $3 million in profit from Ford stocks and options.

As defense chief, McNamara reshaped America's armed forces for "flexible response" and away from the nuclear "massive retaliation" doctrine espoused by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. He asserted civilian control of the Pentagon and applied cost-accounting techniques and computerized systems analysis to defense spending.

Early on, Kennedy regarded South Vietnam as an area threatened by Communist aggression and a providing ground for his new emphasis on counterinsurgency forces. A believer in the domino theory — that countries could fall to communism like a row of dominoes — Kennedy dispatched U.S. "advisers" to bolster the Saigon government. Their numbers surpassed 16,000 by the time of his assassination.

Following Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson retained McNamara as "the best in the lot" of Kennedy Cabinet members and the man to keep Vietnam from falling to the Communists.

When U.S. naval vessels were allegedly attacked off the North Vietnamese coast in 1964, McNamara lobbied Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which Johnson used as the equivalent of a congressional declaration of war.

McNamara visited Vietnam — the first of many trips — and returned predicting that American intervention would enable the South Vietnamese, despite internal feuds, to stand by themselves "by the end of 1965."

That was an early forerunner of a seemingly endless string of official "light at the end of the tunnel" predictions of American success. Each was followed by more warfare, more American troops, more American casualties, more American bombing, more North Vietnamese infiltration — and more predictions of an early end to America's commitment.

Sources: MSNBC, Huffington Post, history Channel, Youtube