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

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.

You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times.

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.

What has reality shows got to do with reality? It is beyond unreality; there is nothing real about it.

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.