You think he should have kept that to himself, and just kept telling viewers what U.S. generals were saying without any attempt to determine if it was true?

I didn't say a reporter's job was to parrot an administration, or a military organization. But there's a big diffeerence between showing images, stating facts and indulding in rhetoric. Words like

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. . . .

Have the ring of both emotion and poltical leaning. They encourage a position rather than giving facts that may lead individuals to make a decision.

Actually, I meant to say more, but hit "publish" rather than "preview." No big loss, though. I think you get what I'm saying.

Indeed. In a review of two books written a decade ago, one of which was McNamara's "Argument Without End," Jack Matlock, former diplomat and ambassador to the USSR, sketches out what it might have looked like by taking issue with the premise that:

the decision to ''Americanize'' the war in Vietnam was an error as clearly avoidable as it was tragic. Certainly it was an error, and its results were tragic. Whether it was as easily avoidable as these authors believe is not as clear.

Of course, it is easy to believe that North Vietnam would have accepted a coalition government in the South as a temporary measure to avoid large-scale American intervention. Looking back, we can understand that any political solution would have been preferable to what actually happened. In that sense, the United States did miss an opportunity to avoid a war that had tragic consequences for all.

The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations had good reason to consider proposals for a coalition government merely a cover for an eventual North Vietnamese takeover. Protection of the non Communist South Vietnamese, while important, was probably not the decisive motivation of American officials who decided in favor of war. For an explanation of their choice, we need to recall the American political scene at the time. It was just a few years after the war in Korea, McCarthyism and a bruising debate over who lost China. The most damaging tag that could be placed on any political candidate, particularly a Democrat, was ''soft on Communism.'' John Kennedy recognized this with his charges of a missile gap during his Presidential campaign, his endorsement of the Bay of Pigs invasion, his response to Soviet missiles in Cuba and his rhetoric, especially in his speech in West Berlin.

Let us suppose that, on the Kennedy-Johnson watch, Hanoi had managed to take over South Vietnam as the result of an agreement with the United States. Other dominoes would have started to wobble, not in consequence of some master plan in the Kremlin vaults, but because Moscow, Beijing, Havana and Hanoi would be competing for influence over insurgencies elsewhere, and attempting to create them where they did not yet exist. (Witness Soviet backing for the Cuban adventures in Latin America and Africa in the 1970's: Moscow did not control Fidel Castro, but this did not prevent cooperation to support rebellions in many countries.)

Whether or not further dominoes had fallen, the 1968 election in the United States would have been filled with charges of softness on Communism, and perhaps even treason. Richard Nixon (or, conceivably, Barry Goldwater) would probably have been elected, not with a promise that he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, but with pledges of a renewed anti-Communist crusade. To think that the rapprochement with China or arms control agreements with the Soviet Union would have been possible under such conditions is an exercise in fantasy.

I keep hoping against hope that some day, at some time, your gadfly role will no longer be needed, because journalists will remember what their role is supposed to be. Truth to power. Who, what, where, when, why, how. How simple is that?

Thank you, thank you, thank you . . .

There is an OpEd in the NYT by John Bellinger III, a former Bush State Department lawyer, which IMO is worth noting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/opinion/18bellinger.html

(or click on signature)

"PRESIDENT OBAMA has rightly emphasized America’s commitment to complying with international law. It is surprising, then, that he has so far taken no steps to comply with decisions of the International Court of Justice requiring the United States to review the cases of 51 Mexicans convicted of murder in state courts who had been denied access to Mexican consular officials, in violation of American treaty obligations.

In contrast to its mishandling of detainees, the Bush administration worked conscientiously in its second term to comply with these rulings, even taking the step of ordering the states to revisit the Mexican cases, a move the Supreme Court invalidated last year. The Obama administration should support federal legislation that would enable the president to ensure that the United States lives up to its international obligations."

.....

"President Obama now faces the same challenges as Mr. Bush in 2005: an international obligation to review the cases of those Mexicans remaining on death rows across the country; state governments that are politically unwilling or legally unable to provide this review; and a Congress that often fails to appreciate that compliance with treaty obligations is in our national interest, not an infringement of our sovereignty."

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Hope this will be discussed some time.

Today's NYT has this story, credited to Bloomberg News:

Goldman Executive Named as Obama Adviser

By BLOOMBERG NEWS

Published: July 18, 2009

President Obama said Friday he would nominate Robert Hormats, a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, to a top economic position at the State Department. Mr. Hormats, 66, will be under secretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs. He was deputy trade representative from 1979 through 1981 and held other posts at the State Department throughout his career. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, said in a speech on Wednesday that she hoped to make economic policy and trade a larger part of United States diplomacy.

And that IS the way it is.

Cronkite was one of the last living links to the golden age of American journalism. All the others are dead or have been turned out of the establishment. I'd put Dan Rather with that group. Good stuff on Halberstam, too. I'm reading his magnificent book, The Fifties. It's pretty amazing.