"Even though the delusions of Nixon and Kissinger were well recognized by members of the bureaucracy, who whispered in corridors and leaked juicy items to the press, nobody important quit, nobody important went public, nobody important directly challenged the president or Kissinger, nobody important said out loud, 'You are killing people for nothing.'"
"Was Anything Learned from Vietnam?" at HNN.
One thinks, for instance, of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who could have blown the whistle more than once--on the phoney evidence he presented, supposedly under pressure and against his own better judgement, to the UN, for instance--but who towed the line like a good little Boy Scout (I'm tempted, not unreasonably I think, to use the name of another quasi-military youth group of less wholesome repute for this simile . . . ).
