One of the lessons of the next chapter is that institutions matter in both policy formulation and implementation. Given this, it can be seen that US military policy actions in Vietnam were analogous to requesting budgets with out considering past budgetary bases or their results. Under such irrational conditions, problems are, at best, defined without analytic inputs from the planning and budgeting system. At worst, sensible suggestions for redefinition of policy and reassessment of likely outcomes, as in the case of Iraq, are ignored. The result in that case was a series of bad decisions frozen into policy positions enforced to justify the costs of previous field failures. One can hardly imagine a surer way to waste financial and human resources.