It's impossible to read Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, through any other modern lens but Iraq. And it has plenty to teach, or to remind, about how and why administrations that lock themselves away from contradictory positions fail to see the reality on the ground. But it also delivers an insider's account of how a devoted Cold Warrior could evolve into an anti-war activist in just a few years. It also provides plenty of specific evidence to back up your arguments for why the attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, why Richard Nixon is fucking insane, and how the Pentagon Papers came out. The last one was what I was most interested in, as I had the basics but never the detailed-laden story, and it's that story that really brings the book to life. Too much of the first part is building a case for Ellsberg's move from Cold War true believer, and while a necessary component, it goes on too long, especially the chapters on his time in Vietnam, which are too self-serving in an attempt to illustrate his manly courage in the field. OK, you raced around the most dangerous roads where no white man dared venture and instructed inept commanders while Charlie fired rounds above your head and stood guard while drunken South Vietnamese hefes spewed anti-American trash and hailed machine gun fire over your hut. We got it. You're a bad ass.

That said, the second half is both riveting and very, very disheartening for its depiction of the corruption of power and the sick recognition that it happened all over again and for many of the same reasons. One line from Kissinger that struck me and probably has as much explanatory power as anything else I've read about why we kept going in Vietnam when so many folks on the ground kept saying that the war could not be won: "Yea, things have been going badly, but that's because the previous administration did not know what it was doing. We do." I'm paraphrasing slightly, but it's the arrogance that rings so clearly. It's not only the contempt for the public, but the disdain for just about anybody else outside the inner circle. We know better, trust us, but just to be sure your puny brains don't misconstrue what we're trying to do, we'll lie over and over again to that guppy press and they'll turn our lies into the truth of public perception and then we can do whatever we damn well please. Near the very end of the book, when Ellsberg is finally exonerated for releasing the Pentagon Papers and Nixon's plumbers are being busted and cutting deals with the Feds and Tricky Dick is isolated and cursing the world and still increasing the secret bombing, somebody asks Ellsberg what good he believes the release of the Pentagon Papers and the entire anti-war movement has done: "None," he replies, adding that all the protests did nothing to stop Nixon and Kissinger from raining down bombs on innocent civilians, and while the implosion from Watergate and the psychiatrist office break-ins might have shortened the war slightly, the number of deaths during Nixon's time after he vowed publicly in '68 to withdraw with honor is staggering.

It's an old lesson but we just keep forgetting to tap ourselves on the shoulder and remind our lazy asses: if Congress and the press do not check Executive power, administrations will do what they want and lie about it. The nature of power being what it is, human beings and human institutions need strong restraints, and Congress has to show more wisdom and less machismo in the future when real, imagined or constructed threats appear. Instead of racing to give future Admins the blank check of expedient war powers, let's all take a deep breath, put the flags down and measure the threat honestly and prudently. Twice now Congress has laid down and told an Administration that hey, guys, we trust you, and look at the results. We're always gonna get nutjob execs drunk on theory and power looking to etch their names in the history books through foreign wars. Bush is just Nixon without the brain or the self-consciousness and inferiority issues. Will the press, the Congress and the people ever remember that to give too few, too much power is to ask for corruption and lies and aggressively bad decisions? Doubt it. See ya in 2032, when we smoke out the atheistic biotechers looking to push the post-human future in the Droid's Republic of Korea. Ought to be a hell of a ride.