Morley Safer Swings For The Fences

The venerable 60 Minutes correspondent was telling it straight in Connecticut.

Excerpt:
Safer, who covered the Vietnam War for CBS, brought up former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's mea culpa on the Vietnam War. "McNamara's plea was that he had no idea that Vietnam had a history of longing for self-determination, a history of resisting foreign invasion."

"The stupidity is unbearable," Safer said. Libraries are full of books on that history, he said - and "reading one would have been enough."

Safer sees a similar problem with the Bush administration, noting the criticism Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld received last year when he referred disparagingly to France and Germany as "old Europe." In the Bush administration, Safer said, "there is a kind of pride in the ignorance."
End Excerpt

Also, Gail Collins was just awful. Awful. She shouldn't be at the same event as Safer. Ugh.