Bad Subjects: The Trial of Henry Kissinger The Trial introduces us to a man who will use any situation to advance his political power, regardless of the body count. According to Hitchens, Kissinger finessed the breakdown of the first peace talks with North Vietnam, extending the war another four years, which the author contends was a maneuver Kissinger craftily engineered so that he could win himself a position in Lyndon Johnson�s cabinet. Hitchens also spends a lot of time going over the human costs of Kissinger's foreign policy. For example, between 1968 and 1972, Kissinger authorized over 3500 missions against the civilian populations of Laos and Cambodia using B-52 bombers. According to Pentagon figures, during that time 31, 205 American servicemen, 86,101 South Vietnamese regulars and 475,609 "enemy" troops were killed. During the same period �more than 3 million civilians were killed, injured or rendered homeless