But, in fact, by then we were closer on Vietnam as well, for he had, after two decades of silence regarding the war, published his book In Retrospect , in which he repudiated his former justifications for the war, famously writing of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, “We were wrong, terribly wrong.” Many of McNamara’s critics assert – rightly, I think – that he stopped short of full understanding, that he sought to hold fast to claims of noble intentions that the record could not sustain.