Sigaba
07-06-2009, 13:49
Source is here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070601197_pf.html).
Robert McNamara, Architect of Vietnam War, Dies at 93
By Thomas W. Lippman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, July 6, 2009 1:13 PM
Robert S. McNamara, the former secretary of defense whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died early this morning at age 93.
Diana McNamara said her husband died at his home in Northwest Washington. She did not give a cause of death.
McNamara was secretary of defense during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In that capacity he directed a U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia during the critical early years of a Vietnamese conflict that escalated into one of the most divisive and bitter wars in U.S. history. When the war was over, 58,000 Americans were dead and the national social fabric had been torn asunder.
Before taking office as secretary of defense in 1961, McNamara was president of Ford Motor Co. For 13 years after he left the Pentagon in 1968, he was president of the World Bank. He was a brilliant student, a compulsive worker and a skillful planner and organizer, whose manifest talents carried him from modest circumstances in California to the highest levels of the Washington power structure. He was said to have built a record of achievement and dedication in business, government and public service that few of his generation could match.
After his retirement from the bank in 1981, he maintained an exhausting schedule as director or consultant to scores of public and private organizations and was a virtual one-man think tank on nuclear arms issues.
<<SNIP>>
The balance of the lengthy obituary may be found at the link provided above.
Robert McNamara, Architect of Vietnam War, Dies at 93
By Thomas W. Lippman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, July 6, 2009 1:13 PM
Robert S. McNamara, the former secretary of defense whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died early this morning at age 93.
Diana McNamara said her husband died at his home in Northwest Washington. She did not give a cause of death.
McNamara was secretary of defense during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In that capacity he directed a U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia during the critical early years of a Vietnamese conflict that escalated into one of the most divisive and bitter wars in U.S. history. When the war was over, 58,000 Americans were dead and the national social fabric had been torn asunder.
Before taking office as secretary of defense in 1961, McNamara was president of Ford Motor Co. For 13 years after he left the Pentagon in 1968, he was president of the World Bank. He was a brilliant student, a compulsive worker and a skillful planner and organizer, whose manifest talents carried him from modest circumstances in California to the highest levels of the Washington power structure. He was said to have built a record of achievement and dedication in business, government and public service that few of his generation could match.
After his retirement from the bank in 1981, he maintained an exhausting schedule as director or consultant to scores of public and private organizations and was a virtual one-man think tank on nuclear arms issues.
<<SNIP>>
The balance of the lengthy obituary may be found at the link provided above.