If US can’t get its own spin right, how competent is it at waging war?

WHEN Adolf Hitler shot himself in Berlin on April 30, 1945, the United States was at the height of its power.

Thirty years later to the day, the world watched the heart-rending scenes on the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, while people clamoured to get on the helicopters as the Americans abandoned the people they had so shamelessly misled. It was the greatest humiliation in American history.

Maybe General George Custer lost his golden locks and all his men at Little Big Horn, but the spinners managed to turn that into something noble. There was nothing noble about the fall of Saigon. It was the predictable outcome of what Bill Clinton's mentor, the late Senator J William Fulbright of Arkansas, called "the arrogance of power".