I thought we would talk a little bit today about something Fred knows quite a bit about too,

and he knows many of the people we'll be talking about,

which is the process of making decisions in wartime.

And I think we really tend to forget, it's easy to forget,

even when you're working in an institution like the Pentagon,

that the people who are making these decisions are actually all human beings.

And they are subject to a lot of the same personal stresses that all of us are in our daily lives,

on top of which they have to bear the burden of responsibility

for some incredibly difficult, you know, life and death decisions.

And I think one of the big takeaways from my 30 years in government is if I had to do it over

and study something that I didn't study enough before I got into government, it would be

social psychology and cognitive psychology and trying to

understand a little bit better how those processes work.

Just to offer a couple of examples, and I welcome an opportunity to discuss these and others

that people may think of from their own

experience. Secretary McNamara, by the end of his tenure as Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam

War, had come dangerously close President Johnson felt to having a nervous breakdown and ultimately

left office in 1967 became president of the World Bank,

and maintained a studied silence about Vietnam for almost 30 years until he published his

memoir about it in which he delivered himself of a Mia Culpah, which I know, at least talking to one former

Secretary of Defense will remain nameless for this purpose, thought was absolutely outrageous

that McNamara in his memoir would recount that he sent people off to fight and die in a war

...