“My father was the king of the joke-tellers. I was so impressed as a child watching him, holding people in rapt attention.”

“As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a 'war of choice' whose costs we are still paying.”