The gist of McNamara's reflections is that - in wartime - those in power really don't know much about what's happening. For example, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the White House received two conflicting messages from Nikita Khrushchev. Through "blind luck" - and advice by Soviet Union Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson - Kennedy was able to avoid a nuclear disaster. McNamara is also candid about the United States erroneously believing that the Vietnam conflict was part of the Cold War, rather than a new chapter in a long-standing colonial war on Asian soil. And he implies eerie Vietnam-Iraq parallels in the current war on terror.

Filmmaker Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line") utilizes taped White House conversations and archival newsreel footage that is cleverly intercut with a lucid one-on-one interview with the thoughtful and articulate McNamara, whose views are punctuated by Philip Glass's insistent score. The title derives from McNamara's assertion that "war is so complex (that) we cannot comprehend all the variables." Our human errors only become clear in hindsight. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Fog of War" is an unnerving, ambivalent 8, particularly recommended for history buffs and those interested in 20th century American foreign policy.