After four or five different wars, I grew weary of that work, partly because in an open war, open to coverage, as Vietnam was, it's not that difficult, really.

But to a Vietnamese peasant whose home means a lifetime of back-breaking labor, it will take more than presidential promises to convince him that we are on his side.

Killing is the payoff of war.

I really feel stateless, which is not bad, because I always felt a man without a country was not encumbered by narrow loyalties.

I'm just wondering whether going back to the mundane bread-and-butter stuff of legal work must be kind of boring, no?

McNamara's plea was that he had no idea that Vietnam had a history of longing for self-determination, a history of resisting foreign invasion.