If he lied to TNR then the worst that would happen is that the left will believe him, the right will not, and those in the middle will wring their hands over it for ages and come to no conclusion. In fact, lieing here will make him a huge hero to the left for standing up for what he believes.

If he lied to the military investigation while under oath he goes to jail.

Generally speaking I find the latter to be the most likely place to tell the truth. In one case he is *better off* by not telling the truth, in the other he goes to jail for it.

“Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published a powerful column by the former Romanian intelligence officer Ion Mihai Pacepa. The subject of Pacepa’s column was the destructive effect of the left’s intemperate attacks on the president. Buried in Pacepa’s column is this intriguing paragraph:

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.”

The men who did My Lai were just as human as the men who didn’t.

The problem is that, thorough as military training is, it can’t always make up for living eighteen-plus years among civilians.

Written by Rev. Paul W. McNellis, S.J.

I can hardly wait for part II!