‘The Columnist’ (Halberstam): “We did it! It’s all our fault!”

HALBERSTAM: He doesn’t know the country, he breezes over here for a week, he stays with Lodge at the embassy, he gets his army car and driver, Harkins puts a helicopter at his disposal, he gets whatever he wants… Meanwhile, the rest of us are killing ourselves here worked to death, living in hovels, earning crap, eating crap, and taking literally endless s— back home for trying to tell a sliver of a fraction of the truth about this f— up place, and he saunters in with his pressed suits and his cigarette holder and his phony f— Andover WASP Harvard accent, and his connections… and somehow manages to notice, during an exclusive two-day interview that the rest of us would give our eyeteeth for, that the f— head of the country, the guy we’re fighting and dying for, Our Man in Vietnam — who, by the way, you two have been cheerfully pimping from the get-go — he notices that this man is not only a corrupt and incompetent and hopeless loser and dope, as the rest of us have been saying for months if not years, but also, by the way, actually insane — He notice this…  and then blames… the press! We did it! It’s all our fault!