I stumbled on his writing with" The best and Brightest"; great read, and have read every other book . Sad news .

I read David Halberstam's The Reckoning while in college and was very impressed with the subject matter and his illuminating writing style. The Reckoning deals with the beginning of the decline of the U.S. auto industry vis a vis the Japanese auto makers during the 1970's. How ironic that he was killed in an auto accident. We are the poorer for the this loss.

I have nothing remotely coherent to say. I am absolutely crushed.

I invited David Halberstam to speak at an annual luncheon I staged to convey scholarships on the kids of Vietnam veterans. In my invitation, I told him if I had written the letter 20 years earlier, it would have been to lure Halberstam out of NYC so I could have a clear shot at him. Back in those odd, angry days after Vietnam, we were all looking for someone to blame and the media was a slow-moving target. The more I read, the more I mellowed and understood the folly of shooting at the messenger. Halberstam accepted my invitation and came and spoke so elegantly and articulately about the maltreatment of Vietnam veterans all predicated on the fallacious notion that we fought against a "rag-tag bunch of fartmers." Instead, he reminded the 600+ people in attendance, our army fought against one of the finest light infantries in the world and defeated them militarily. Then, like now, military victory did not translate into final victory but that was not because of the soldiers, who Halberstam said "were the best, even as the nation thought of you as less than the brightest." I was subjected to wide criticism for inviting a member of the media and someone who was not "actually" a Vietnam vet, but in the end, David Halberstam was every bit as much a veteran as the rest of us and paid us a great honor in his visit and his remarks.

He was a man of great intelligence and more importantly, a man of greater sensitivity. He will be sorely missed.

Requiescat in Pace ...

Another war another time the New York Times had David Halberstam reporting. This war this time the Times had Judith Miller. Nothing more needs to be said

HK

Commondreams.org just published a piece today that Halberstam wrote in the form of a letter to his daughter for Parade Magazine back in 1982, about how the Vietnam experience transformed him. Definitely worth a read.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/24/707/

on "Common Dreams" and wish to thank Ceci for refering us to it. I wept again for, while Halberstam was not a "friend of mine," he was a friend to all of us.