To vnjagvet: Christians are supposed to forgive their enemies. Jane Fonda was easy. Robert S. McNamara a bit less so, to put things mildly.

To be as objective as possible: I put Strange down to a personality disorder. Whatever was dysfunctional was to be imposed, whater was functional was to be scuttled.

Pattern for him was the same at Ford, at the Pentagon and at the World Bank.

All human beings malfunction this way from time to time. Every so often you run into one that does it all of the time.

A clean and sober JFK would probably not been as heavily influenced by the artful dissembling. An LBJ not so enamored of the welfare state might have seen through the smokescreen. But the former was spaced out on dope and the latter on hearing only what he wanted to hear. Easy meat for a compulsive manipulator.

Just remember, wars do not get started without a good stiff dose of irrationality and there is no telling where the next dose will come from.

Let us both be grateful we were there and not on Bataan.