Sound Like Anyone . . . ?

From Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Reason Why, page 175 (in the 1982 reprint edition):

Nevertheless, in spite of the record in his diary, Cardigan was very far from accepting his fate. He possessed the type of mind which by brooding on facts is able to transform them. He was the kind of man who talks incessantly of what is on his mind, repeats hundreds of times and in the same words his own version of events, ignores his adversary's point of view, and so ultimately is able to convince himself that what has happened has not happened, and that black is white.

The Reason Why is a "famous" study of the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. It follows the two key commanders of the Light Brigade, "the commanders in the field," if you will, and Cardigan is one of them (Lord Lucan is the other). It turns out that the Crimean War has some strange parallels to current events. Consider this, from the introduction (to the 1982 reprint edition) by Gordon Craig:

The Crimean War is an inglorious episode of the Victorian era, and it reflects credit neither on British statecraft nor on British arms. After the conflict had started, there were few Englishmen who could have explained why it had been necessary to go to war in the Near East, and after it was over, Lord Stanmore said sadly that the struggle had been 'undertaken to resist an attack that was never threatened and probably never contemplated.'

Eerie, isn't it?