Robert S. McNamara, the brainy Pentagon chief who directed the escalation of the Vietnam War despite private doubts the war was winnable or worth fighting, died July 6 at 93.

McNamara revealed his misgivings three decades after the American defeat that some called "McNamara's war."

Closely identified with the war's early years, McNamara was a forceful public optimist. He predicted that American intervention would enable the South Vietnamese, despite internal feuds, to stand by themselves "by the end of 1965." The war ground on until 1975, with more than 58,000 U.S. deaths.

Lawyerly and a student of statistical analysis, McNamara was recruited to run the Pentagon by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 from the presidency of the Ford Motor Co. — where he and a group of colleagues had been known as the "whiz kids."

He stayed in the defense post for seven years, longer than anyone else since the job's creation in 1947. He left on the verge of a nervous breakdown and became president of the World Bank. In the new post, he threw himself into the intricacies of international development, and argued that improving lives was a more promising path to peace than building up arms and armies.