from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, April 8th.

We want to focus on what almost happened, which might still happen in around two weeks from now,

and which is still

happening right now in Lebanon, the purposeful destruction of civilian infrastructure and the

killing of many civilians to achieve a military goal. It's still happening in Lebanon because

Israel did not fully sign on to the ceasefire with respect to that front in the war,

as I'm seeing it reported. Of course, Iran and its proxies have not been shy about killing civilians either.

We have two guests, including a former chief legal advisor for international law at U.S. Central Command,

but I want to start with some clips from the 2004 movie, The Fog of War.

It was a documentary built around an interview with former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

He was an architect of the Vietnam War under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s, but arguably the most striking part of that film was when McNamara spoke about the role of the United States and ending World War II.

And spoiler alert, he says we committed war crimes. I'm going to play a few clips in this first one, 45 seconds. He references

General Curtis LeMay, who ordered the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

but focuses here on what the U.S. did before that in Japan. Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear

bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan?

And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities.

58% of Yokohama.

Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland.

58% of Cleveland destroyed.

Tokyo is roughly the size of New York.

51% of New York destroyed.

99% of the equivalent of Shattanooga, which was Toyama.

...