In those days, we had television, radio, newspapers and magazines — essentially one-way communications to the public without much of an opportunity for that same public to respond in a venue that the media, or our fellow citizens, could hear or read. No Internet; no blogs.

But we did have the widely-read Life magazine, which I believe is now defunct. Life carried a series of photographs, including the one (and I'm sorry to say this here; delete if you wish) of the young Vietnamese girl running naked down the street, her skin burned by — one supposes — chemicals, napalm, who knows. And another famous photo: the kneeling Asian man just about to be executed at gunpoint. Due to their publication by Life magazine, these unvarnished photographs reached right into America's living rooms, altering the perceptions of the war. I think that that series of photos did as much to end the war as anything else. On the one hand, we had what we were being told. On the other hand, we had the undeniable photographs.