Robert McNamara Dead

Robert McNamara Dead

www.huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert S. McNamara, the cerebral secretary of defense who was vilified for prosecuting America's most controversial war and 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.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Most of his time in power was probably long before i was born but he seemed to have been a part of some interesting parts of history? would be interesting to know what he really though of the JFK and RFK assassinations? and who he really thought was behind them. Must also have been some interesting stories from his time in the JFK government?

www.huffingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

He had an amazing intellect, but as with many great men it was sometimes misdirected.

While so many millions and born and die with such meaningless lives in between, McNamara lived the life of a truly great man, and has earned his place in history.

Interesting to know there are still people out there who are willing to risk their lives in the face of the most conspirator nations in all of planet earth. I bet you he did know more, or inside information, on the John F Kennedy assassination. I bet if one were to interview his wife ten years down or even in a few years, she could and would relay some secrets to the public. Important or not, it would be very interesting to see what his wife does know, if anything, on any subject relating to confidential status.

check out my pimped out sig

McNamara you taught me many great things about the world.

Great guy. People thought he was a jerk but IMO he was very misunderstood. He was actually pretty dang nice. He told the soldiers to NOT carry bullets when the protests hit the Pentagon during Nam.
He admitted he was wrong about bombing Japan, about Vietnam. He was an honest fellow and Id go to the funeral if i could.

Read up on him and check out his documentary. Fog of War.


Good American

May you RIP my friend!

What a life that man had!

As you can tell, I found out about this today and it was a huge deal to me.

I was just WAITING for someone to start the tread, because I belong in this thread.

I am not going to go defending him or any rubbish, I am just saying my piece that he was no where near as bad as people said. He sought forgiveness and sought to educate us about what really happened.

Hey no ones perfect but at least Bob made something of himself!

He was the first guy that i ever heard admit the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a 100% hoax that we created in order to start the war up. Like 10 years ago, this guy was a major factor that got me into researching conspiracies and such.

My sig says it all doesn't it?

Originally posted by born2BWild
I bet you he did know more, or inside information, on the John F Kennedy assassination.

He was already spilling the beans about alot of things. However, I never heard him say much about who was behind JFK. I honestly think he was not sure who did it. Just my gut instincts based on what I have heard him say.

Hell there is even an audio tape of LBJ admitting he was scared crapless about the JFK assassination. He thought he would be next. Listen to the LBJ + J Edgar Hoover tapes. Its all in there.

Wow, this guy had his hand in a lot of cookie jars.

General Motors
Department of Defense
World Bank
Vietnam

All tied together I guess..

Ok for anyone who wants to know about McNamara.

Ill post some clips for yall. Listen Up because he actually has something important to teach All of Us.

Some of this video has a clicking sound in it. If you do not like that, stop bumming great vids for free and go out and Rent or Buy the Disk. Its 100% worth the $$$ you will pay.

























ill update and add more - but im watching them again as i post


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I thought it was Ford Motor Company, not General Motors. Either way, the guy's a total cretin in my book.

Let's see.....58,000 American lives lost in Vietnam. Another 3-4 Million Vietnamese from both sides. 1.5-2 Million Laotians and Cambodians dead.

McNamara has blood on his hands.

This alleged "Whiz Kid" was the architect and mastermind of the disaster we call the Vietnam War.

(How is it that all these so called Harvard graduates end up being complete idiots and moral midgets when they assume high office? Harvard turns out some of the most blundering, immoral leaders.)

I hope he made peace with the Lord before he died. His boneheaded decisions during wartime caused a massive amount of casualties --- and social havoc here at home.

Originally posted by Retseh
McNamara lived the life of a truly great man, and has earned his place in history.

Yup. He killed a lot of people. That seems to be what it takes, unless you want to die by an assassin's bullet like Ghandi, King, and Malcolm X.

That article... what a bunch of tripe. Did any Americans reading it note that although the number of US casualties was given, the far greater number of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian casualties was never mentioned? From the article:

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."

Does anyone think they were referring to the Indochinese dead? Conservative estimates of the number of casualties run four million Indochinese killed. I'm sorry, those Americans who bang on about a few hundred thousand soldiers dead in a war they started, based on a lie... and ignore the far, far greater destruction they wrought on a people who posed no threat to them whatsoever... it makes me quite sick.

There's an article by Chomsky which is linked from the Huffington Post article that gives a decent perspective.

QUESTION: On [PBS'] Macneil-Lehrer [Newshour], he now says he had misgivings about the policies.

CHOMSKY: What were the misgivings? The misgivings were that it might not succeed. Suppose that some Nazi general came around after Stalingrad and said, "I realized after Stalingrad it was a mistake to fight a two-front war, but I did it anyway." That's not the Nuremberg defense. That's not even recognizing that a crime was committed. You've got to recognize that a crime was committed before you give a defense. McNamara can't perceive that. Furthermore, I don't say that as a criticism of McNamara. He is a dull, narrow technocrat who questioned nothing. He simply accepted the framework of beliefs of the people around him. And that's their framework. That's the Kennedy liberals. We cannot commit a crime. It's contradiction in terms. Anything we do is by necessity not only right, but noble. Therefore, there can't be a crime.

If you look at his mea culpa, he's apologizing to the American people. He sent American soldiers to fight an unwinnable war, which he thought early on was unwinnable. The cost was to the U.S. It tore the country apart. It left people disillusioned and skeptical of the government. That's the cost. Yes, there were those three million or more Vietnamese who got killed. The Cambodians and Laotians are totally missing from his story. There were a million or so of them. There's no apology to them.

Having helped destroy three countries in Indochina, McNamara then went on to the World Bank...

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.

How sweet. But of course, the World Bank doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Joseph Stiglitz knows this... but McNamara didn't. Funnily enough, here's what Wikipedia says about this...

From 1968–1980 the bank focused on poverty alleviation and meeting the basic needs of people in the developing world. During this period the size and number of loans to borrower nations was greatly increased as the spectrum of loan targets expanded from infrastructure into social services and other sectors. These changes can to a large extent be attributed to Robert McNamara who assumed the Presidency in 1968 after being appointed by US president Lyndon B. Johnson...

McNamara shifted the focus of bank policy towards measures such as building schools and hospitals, improving literacy rates and conducting large-scale agricultural reform... One consequence of the period of poverty alleviation lending was the rapid rise of third world debt. From 1976–1980 third world debt rose at an average annual rate of 20%.

Mmmm. Yummy third world debt keeping our banking elites in the style to which they've become accustomed. It all seems so nice and cuddly... literacy rates, "agricultural reform", all that good stuff. But as Stiglitz would later reveal, it's part of a system that keeps third world nations in thrall. Did the G8, for example, a couple of years back, release any of the debt? No.

I'd say he made his mark on history all right.

reply to post by rich23


watch the videos i posted

he is up front and honest about what happened to the enemy

reply to post by muzzleflash



"FOG of WAR" is in my all time top 5 documentaries.

Whatever you think of McNamara everyone should watch this film, it is simply amazing.

it should be required viewing in high schools...

[edit on 6-7-2009 by drock905]

Originally posted by drock905


"FOG of WAR" is in my all time top 5 documentaries.

Whatever you think of McNamara everyone should watch this film, it is simply amazing.

it should be required viewing in high schools...

[edit on 6-7-2009 by drock905]

i am 100% with you on this, it should definitely be Required

hopefully some people around here who have never seen it will see it now, because it is extremely enlightening

Originally posted by CookieMonster09
I thought it was Ford Motor Company, not General Motors.

Oops! You are right, it was Ford, not GM.

My mistake.

reply to post by muzzleflash

Some will see McNamara as a war criminal, others as a great American. For most of us, he's somewhere in between.

Either way, The Fog of War is a fantastic documentary about this remarkable man.

I encourage everyone who hasn't seen it to watch it. Muzzleflash's got the links above Or you can search for it on Google Video, where the whole version can be seen in one go.






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I found it odd that the guy was still alive anyway. Odd How many lives have been lost, while his lingered on until 93. I suppose by his own admissions and maybe not yet entirely and fully known, such as with full disclosure in all respects. He might then be seen as a different kind of hero? JFK assassination and Roswell comes to mind, to be more specific.

And NO, I personally can't blame just one guy when it came to the JFK/military/elite administration, like they did with Oswald. Someway or another, they were all tools of deception, power and greed.

ok i finally got the entire doc up for everyone to see now (yay)

if you like it plz buy it and share it with other people

the guy may have died today, but i sure hope to god we learn from his mistakes

he brought us his mistakes hoping we would learn from them

reply to post by CookieMonster09


cookie, you nailed it.

Harvard graduates truly are idiots, but they don't know it. When surrounded by other idiots, one begins to think that idiocy is normal.

This SOB should have died long ago. His intellectual arrogance got a lot of good men killed.

"Graduated response." Every master of warfare has clearly stated the exact opposite through the millennia.

Of course, McNamara was smarter than all of them, and more intuitive than all the lessons hard-learned over the millennia that were there for the taking.

Dumbass.

So Robert McNamara is dead at 93 years of age. Some will mourn his passing while others' will rejoice. He served under JFK and LBJ, was a member of the touted "wiz kids," father of strategy in Vietnam, often referred to by some a mass-murderer and war criminal, a genius to others, corporate mastermind of Ford Motor company and other business ventures, WWII veteran, and giving philanthropist.

The man was a enigma and lived a life only few have had a chance to lead. However, there are pit falls in everyone's lives and none are immune from them. Unfortunately, his pit fall was one of the biggest disasters of the last century and the cause of an emptiness in the heart of America that refuses to close. That disaster was Vietnam where millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of service members perished. However, I don't think a day passed after the Vietnam War where he didn't regret his involvement in that long bloody war. How can I put it, Mr. McNamara was a good man in the wrong place at the right time. When the drums of war are being pounded in the halls of the White House and the Congress, one man, Robert McNamara, wouldn't be able to extinguished the war-like aspirations of the people he served under. He was the Secretary of Defense and when the President and the legislature wants to go to war it is his duty to oblige.

I am just thankful I was never thrust into that man's position during those hellish years of the Vietnam War. I don't know how any man could have a positive effect on society and within their own personal life with the immense darkness that surely clouded his mind from Vietnam? I think over the years the man made an honest effort to make things right with society and hopefully with himself before his death.





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