“Synthesizing material from dozens of books and many dozens of interviews, Halberstam focused on the odd paradox that those who crafted the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America — ‘the best and the brightest’ — and yet those same men were unable to imagine and promote any but a bloody and disastrous course in the Vietnam War.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Halberstam