"systems analysis,"

is a disturbing history of very smart people putting their brains at the service of very stupid ideas.

Wohlstetter's analysis

had inspired and advanced a new generation of apprentices who would become the Neocons: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad.

"scientific"

Like the Bolsheviks, they believed in reason yet never examined their basic premises. Their patriotism was as irrational as that of the Vietcong, but far more destructive. It didn't matter. As long as they had access to the billions in the US defense budget, and they could invoke a Soviet or terrorist threat, they flourished.