Quotes from Robert Timberg

Milt Copulos, a friend of Jim Webb, spent three and a half years in the hospital and received the last rites seven times as a result of his Vietnam service. He put it this way: "There's a wall ten miles high and fifty miles thick between those of us who went and those who didn't, and that wall is never going to come down.

Corson arrived at the Academy in September 1964 as an instructor. His course in guerrilla warfare quickly became a midshipman favorite. His teaching methods were unconventional. He had books imported from mainland China, including three volumes of Mao's writing. To Corson, the lesson was clear: if you can't outlast the guerrilla, don't get in the game.

Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.

Hemingway writes of people becoming stronger in the broken places, which is a heartening thought, and sometimes true. All too often, though, it belongs in the file that Jim Webb labeled typical Hemingway bullshit.

Reagan's second chief of staff, said it best: no other President of the modern era was so much a presence in the affairs of state without being an actual participant.