This is the difference an assassination makes. The difference between an aborted 'police action' and 12 more years of war, culminating in defeat and retreat. Was MacNamara saying more than he knew? Or less than he knew?
He discusses - and illustrates by playing a tape of a conversation with President Kennedy - Kennedy's firm intention to pull out of Nam by the end of 1964. ". . . but there was a coup," he says - and pauses a breath-stopping beat too long, "in South Vietnam." And then he delivers a shocker: JFK didn't know about the coup, which was certainly carried out with the knowledge of our military and/or intelligence apparatus, in advance.
Then he plays a tape of LBJ announcing his intention to reverse that policy, and escalate the war.
"The Fog of War" is the most important film made about the Vietnam War and about JFK's assassination. There is a dark sort of humor too, though it may be as inadvertent as Mac's revelation re the Diem assassination. . . IF that revelation was, indeed, inadvertent.
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