Giap, 83, the strategic architect of Vietnam’s victory, upon meeting his old foe. “I heard about you long ago.” McNamara, 79, replied with a laugh, “I have heard of you, too.”
Neither man offered an apology. But McNamara admitted in an autobiography published earlier this year that “we were wrong, terribly wrong” to pursue the war, and he was in Vietnam last week seeking support for an international conference on exactly how it all went wrong. Giap gave him a starting point by revealing that one o! the 1964 Gulf of Ton-kin attacks on American warships, which President Lyndon Johnson used to justify the huge U.S. buildup in Southeast Asia, never actually took place. You learn a lot when you bury the hatchet.
