"The best way to achieve complete strategic surprise is to take an action that is either stupid or completely contrary to your self-interest"

--- A sign then-Deputy National Security Advisor (and current Secretary of Defense) Robert Gates had on his desk at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, according to Richard Haass in War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars, Simon & Schuster 2009, p. 59