or even shortly thereafter is realistic. it is a long term if you want to fix this country it will take a long time, and i would say conservatively about eight to ten years would be more realistic. >> host: we will have to have some presence in afghanistan to have a presence affecting afghanistan. if you pull them out of afghanistan then you're not able to operate in ways that are helpful to the pakistani government. >> guest: exactly, and the pakistanis have got their own challenges right now in their country with the radicals of iraq so to come out of pakistan before you're able to leave behind a relatively stable, and i use the term relative because they could still probably go either way. but the least to leave the central government in charge that can protect internally and externally is to say that pakistan may fall shortly after afghanistan does. >> host: before we conclude i want to say a word about carolyn.

there's a book that i was really fond of and circulated the pentagon called the gates of fire and one of the best historical novels about the battle where you had 300 us martin warriors defend against 100,000 or more persian soldiers coming through that gap and those 300 warriors, the spartans, they were picked not only for their courage and to devotee because they were basically capable, they were picked based upon the courage of the spartan wives, and i think about carolina. she had been with you -- >> guest: 47 years. >> host: from the very beginning, by your side or behind you at virtually every moment. and i think in your book you point out of all of the years you spent 35 or more in the military you had 23 moves and that is not untypical of what we require of those who serve us,

so you may say another word about carroll win, but i just want to say a final word to you. there is a quote he said to me one time from william tecumseh sherman. i knew wherever i was that you thought of me and if i got in a tight place you would come for me. if alive. and i just want to say that every soldier who has ever served with you, any person who has the privilege of working with you those if they ever got into a tight place, if they were ever in trouble you would come for them if a life. thank you for just a wonderful contribution to the security of this country. you are a patriot, a warrior and a friend who i couldn't have a better one and the country couldn't have a better one than you, and this book, everyone should read this "without hesitation."

the story of the life of a great patriot. thanks for being here. >> guest: thinks mr. secretary. it's my pleasure and i couldn't she was the wind beneath my wings and it is a pleasure serving. you were a great patriot yourself and a great american. was my honor to serve. ..

>> i really 122 thank you for loading the bookstore for this event. what happens to me whenever i talk is i go out with many more books mahan night come in. if you buy a lot of my books than those you have already picked up, check out those and we can say thank you to garcia street. my title is the women jefferson loved that invites a lot of comments. the first is that there is a lot of them? or how many? everybody wants to know about the thomas jefferson why this it and they have ever since he had.

[laughter] but this book will disappoint you if that is all you want to know but also what he did and what is in his head and in his heart and what i have found in my research of the women jefferson loved is his wife and his mother and his daughter and his concubine sally having this and his granddaughter's all of these women were people for whom his love meant all lot not only for purposes of his private life but also his love for women shaped how he worked in public and everything he did and the legacy for which we revere him. this is a story of his private life and about his public accomplishments and how these two are connected.

i have a story based on research and ported to thomas jefferson but it is about is rather as tuesday. why another book about thomas jefferson? what will this tell me that i don't already know? and the answer is, it will tell you about women we have not know before and the lives of these women. i am a historian by trade. you cannot find out about women this is what we are told. because nothing is there. or, if we did find out, it would be a boring story. maybe they applied to a caller on a dress. but i am here to tell you we can find out a lot for these

women even though it jefferson burned every letter between him and his mother and every single letter between him and his wife even though they were burned and we have no letters between jefferson and sally having snow one woman who most believe libor at least one and maybe six children we have no letters between them. that is okay because we have a pattern of things that are missing also other documentation that would blow your mind from archaeological evidence to private documents like wills and account books and then there are letters between jefferson and his granddaughter's or letters among the women his daughters and granddaughters and sisters that give us a very, very rich picture of these women's lives.

i am here to tell you they survived floods, fire, to regulations not incidentally , there were murders in their lives of people close to them a tremendous amount of domestic abuse and great joy and great violence and a great coping with tragedy as well for all of the winded and jefferson's life. they had interesting lives and the can know about these livestock. that is the first thing you need to know i saw you looking at the family trade but for the first time there is a family tree i have put together of the jefferson wales handing this family tree and this has never 10 before the women he loved

most most were blood relation. when you hear the stories, who was the one we know? celly and earnings who was his slave his body belonged to him whether she wanted it or not but his granddaughter , was the leader of the effort to deny this has ever happened but this was a longstanding tradition in virginia among descendants of thomas jefferson, a legitimate descendants the denial of the connection between jefferson and having this was an industry they said it was a moral impossibility. [laughter] you laugh because you know, there are a lot of things in this life that are not moral but not many that could not

be possible. this was not a moral impossibility in fact, jefferson in having as were the second generation and in their families to have children together and they were not the last. so what ellen coolidge, his brave white granddaughter calls i believe was a family tradition. [laughter] and something that shaped him forever. there are two families i have put together as one. this is a house divided that exist across the chasm of slavery. that is something i invite you to talk to me how you put one story together of people whose interests are

opposed by blood, terror, and by money and everything else but within this regime of source and violence, there is also intimacy and connection that is hard to get our minds around. imagine being a woman that wakes up in the morning the first person you give an order to like carry out my chamber pot who is your half-sister also your slave or the woman the first thing you are told, take my slop out and come back later and you will have to sell my head because i hurt my clothing in the ballroom and you are hurt slave and her aunt and the woman who was sleeping with her father. and he expects too never to talk about this if that is at all possible and try to

enter into that in the universe the regime of tension and it is hard to fathom we have to come to grips with that story. a story of a house divided come of families that have shot of one another for your history where one side of the family, the white family denies and denies until very, very recently and the other side does not say anything but they keep it alive. they keep the memory alive in spite of this legacy of denial until science and vindicates. 1998 the dna evidence comes out we can talk about that as well but that, along with millions of other historical evidence demonstrates these

are people that are related by blood comment intimacy, secrets and silence and the stories are absolutely incredible. the next thing i want you to know it is more controversy contention i believe thomas jefferson of these women and the love was very powerful in he was motivated by his love for the women upon whom he depended and who depended upon him that he created an entire political order to the extent that he could all of his public accomplishments starting with his first public pricings was a summary view of the summary of the northwest ordinance is establishing a survey system the louisiana purchase every single one of these public accomplishments was intended for a platform that freed men may pursue "life,

liberty, and pursuit of happiness" but also upon which they could protect and provide for the women that they love. thomas jefferson did not believe men and women were created equal. he did not believe that. he believed they were affected by nature for complementarity purposes. men were to provide and protect the women and others depended on them and overtime the independence -- dependence of the women, were made to nurture, obey, please. if everybody was doing these things, they would be happy. you are laughing because you know, real-life gets in the way. because this happen in the case of jefferson but he was idealistic. whether they were the best thing for everybody included is another case. i am sorry to report the

fact he could not live up to his ideal manhood provision broke his heart broke his heart when his only daughter, the only daughter of his marriage to survive into adulthood and survive him he left destitute $100,000 in debt his daughter who devoted her entire life to him in a decade away her home was taken from her, all of her property including her human property, the family treasures are put up put up on the auction block along with the people that they live with forever with certain exceptions he could not keep the promise to provide and protect for paddy jefferson randolph it broke his heart and it broke purse.

most complete the is legitimate family hart tried hard is to deny which was sally hemming because he made one promise to her and said we're just moving somebody out of the way. happily it is standing-room-only. but he said to sally having the summit in paris that is another interesting story how she got to paris she made him promise if she went back to america with him, because she was pregnant with their first child, he would fried any children that they had. the only people freed in his will or the having six children four of his

children to walk away with from the plantation two of them are freed in the will and two other and then others were freed as well and giving them their freedom meant a valuable property was not available to be sold so patty jefferson randolph could have more so keeping his promise to sallie cummings came at a cost for patsy randolph. thomas jefferson will not go around to say i love this woman would not be leonardo dicaprio. [laughter] show urging it to the world but i don't know if we can have a stronger testament but all the children were freed in new all lifelong according to their son they

knew they would be free. love is complicated and the other thing this book about incredibly complicated this is i am not saying it was always good for them more for him love can be lethal and his wife had eight pregnancies and finally died from them. there were the zero ladies who had many children and survived or those who had babies until they died and both were in the jefferson randolph family they had one dozen children or eight children and lived to see only one of them live to be as old as i am or did not live to see that. his daughter patti jefferson randolph had 12 children 11

lift it to adulthood. she was pregnant 23 years. you think jefferson's life do sally handing us was complicated you should care about patty and her husband. love hurts. love this generous and possessive kindly and brutal and you see all of the manifestation of you take love seriously and a life of the mahan in so very many letters he wrote about love part but i love you more than life itself. no one can make me so miserable or happy as you. my love for you is the reason i do everything i do. he says it to his daughter the same pregnancy that

finished her off for our wish i could be there with you but i can because i am here to ensure all of us can have the kind of life that i believe in and doing this out of love for you. i believe it is time to take thomas jefferson and his word of the says i am doing that for love that means he really means it. the problem we have had of some years of denial is that people who want to say to this very day i started getting emails from them before the book was published it and the google alert they start writing could not have happened moral and possibility you are wrong. i don't care if you read

every piece of paper or how his mother's family bible you are making this up. he was a man who never would have done such a thing. i have thought about that a lot the attempt to defend thomas jefferson that he had a complicated life and a complicated family. if anybody knows about complicated families, we know about it. i gave a book talk down in albuquerque i could look out into the room who said there is a very good friend of mine who found out at 35 years old that her brother that was adopted was the illegitimate son and there were stories i could tell where families people married across line with ethnicity. that is what we do for a

living. [laughter] i talked about this book at one incredible event at a lovely women's club and one of our big cities these well-dressed women answering interesting questions and they appeared to be loftier being served lunch by servers to alt a seemed to be african-american then i could see the women who were seated but were very riveted there is a little room in the back as the service was finished and they would go back into the kitchen they

did not go back but stood behind the seeded women and they all looked at me and as i am telling the story they were listening. i finally realized they already knew what i would tell them. what's do we lose if we stop the nine that thomas jefferson had a multiracial family? what do we lose to give up the fiction of white supremacy the real american history is why its american history? what we are admitting that they care about these people that he love them for better and for worse. then he became a founding father who truly is one who belongs to all of us in this is a lesson that i have

learned. i will be happy to take questions. [applause] >> in 1988 the results of the steady from dr. foster and what they had done was gone to celly hemingway youngest son who lived as a white man in wisconsin with the end of his life and discovered there was a gene that came from a jeb percent mail they could trace a

direct line of descent to a jefferson mail. this does not mean specifically thomas jefferson. they could narrow down the ancestry stood jefferson lineage with a rare gene but there is other evidence that one is interesting is throughout the history of the case of denial right to rescind the ascendance you were the sons of his sister word is proven also by the dna study. they've rolled out the brothers. sundown the deniers' try to find another culprit. let's go after randolph. the letters between randolph

and thomas jefferson, let me tell you there was no thomas jefferson. which is not to say he was not necessarily the father these children but we cannot establish the was there when the babies were conceived. really jefferson mail that was definitely and certainly the was around was thomas jefferson borough he was gone all lot and stop conceding at the age of 38 and then jefferson is 63 she stops at that point* pratt 38, patsy randolph who was one year older and was her half niece, continued to have four or five more babies after that. you have to look. it is a little complicated. they like to have people marry their cousin.

one genealogists refers to it that looks like a tangle of fish stocks. that is a wonderful metaphor. so stop conceiving about the time maybe he would stop being a part also with moving patsy into the house along with the dna evidence evidence, it seems like a powerful historical case. we do not demand proof of things that we mostly sense to be true. >> a lot of history work is detective work and you have done a lot of detective work and from your comments you work a lot but also with the

evidence to generate clues. can you give an example? >> when historians say the documents aren't there, we have to assume anything not documented did not have been. i can tell you from my own life there are things that i don't document. [laughter] maybe you do. but it is now on a youtube. [laughter] but in the case of jefferson there are moments that at the point* where jefferson has gone over to paris to be ambassador to france, he has left behind his two younger daughters, one of whom that was the baby that led to his beloved wife martha she

contracted whooping cough and in this very, very sad so they have to figure out how to get a salary from virginia to paris and they start doing this in 1784 and takes them two and a half years. letters go back and forth you should bring her? i want a mature woman, preferably a man would do for a responsible shop ron or somebody who is mature and been inoculated against smallpox. letters and letters and letters fortunately ever since it is documentation keeping a journal of every letter that goes in or out. every time there was a discussion about who will bring her over, we will said the slave isabel and turns

up she has a baby and gets sick then they center was a frenchman then doesn't go and all of a sudden she is on a ship nine year-old guy with a 14 year-old who was by no means a mature woman and has not been inoculated against smallpox and no place can you find the name sallie having this. it is not there. but many letters are missing where there pages of letters that happen yanked out just at that moment. . .

not since the book has come out but three days before the book came out, when they were publicizing another book talk that i was going to do the publicist for that event got an e-mail from one of the deniers who was the sort of policemen of the internet every time this pops up she got an e-mail that she forwarded to me, va sharpnel's inaccurate book. right? and i have not bought this book, i will not buy this book by understand it makes this case and you should not believe it because this couldn't have happened. it was randolph, right, the leader dave randolph kind of come out.

yeah i'm sure they will go after it. i'm sure that all three and a half stars on amazon because they will keep posting does your co-star who refuse but i think if you're going to tackle one of the titans you've got to roll with it and be ready for it and i just find it -- i think that there's no longer any point in asking whether this happened. i think the most important thing we can do is ask -- to say it did. what difference does it make that we know that to be our history but we have a more complicated history and that to me is a much more interesting history. >> the other thing is it's the right consciousness that is denying it. the black relatives were always a vociferous about this. i saw some stuff on tv and it's just the history channel and the other thing is other history like indian history, let's stop

in the morning. well it's the only part of the population that's been denying this. the indigenous people know the story. >> i know but for whatever, however many hundreds and decades the are the ones who got to be in charge of what was the truth, so now we have a lot of people participating in the conversation about the american past and you do, you really have to hand it to people for keeping the memory alive against all the heavy weight of denial and the most legitimate and augusta authorities. >> how did you start this journey? >> when i was 5-years-old and wrote my first chapter book, the great landmark biographees. my first chapter book, you can see them on the shelf, right? and i was fascinated by jefferson and as i grew older and as many of us did went

through the feminist movement and i became a women's historian and i have always felt women's stories are more important than we imagined them to be, and i think in this book what i've discovered is the way in which, i mean, my first with thomas jefferson within all men and women were created equal, big disappointment there, then i was really mad at them and thought that misogynist jerk, mad at him about this and then i realized that you have to take people on their own ground and certainly if you are going to be a story and you have to do that, so to see the way in which i guess the road to destitution was paved with the best intentions. >> i am looking forward to reading the book but i am intrigued and maybe you covered this in the book but you mentioned there might be some relationship between jefferson

magnificent and the women that he loved. can you expand on that a little bit? >> i will try to be as distinct as i possibly can. which peace i want to -- i guess i want to talk about the idea what he intended to do. we all knew that jefferson believed farmers were wonderful and he bought louisianan and was the one who invented the wonderful grid survey system. he did this because he believed in the idea the first farmstead were going to give a virtuous republic. he also believed that was the best way for men to be able to protect the women in their lives, and there is a map i had made in this book and its of all the places the women lived and if you look at the map and what a wonderful cartographer did was to make little monticello's for all the places they live and then the bigger dome is monticello, but he believed that you have to be able to have the

kind of secure bastion that were like little private patriarchies everywhere and that is how you establish a virtuous and happy beneficial republic for everybody so the foundation of the quality for white men is based on the notion of patriarchy at home. i don't put it in quite those terms, but i can trace it through the review of the british america which i can trace it in the louisiana purchase and in the northwest ordinance is and then there are other things i found little pieces of the declaration of independence that were deleted by the congress one of which i think is a kind of a fact that he was a terrified about what was happening back in virginia while he was in philadelphia and particularly afraid that the enslaved people on his plantation were going to rebel and kill his family.

he writes about that in the declaration and there is another place i think and his mother died in march of 1776 and this is a long story i am not going to go into but historians for a while said they thought he hated his mother because of letters that went back and forth and instead what i found in the passage of the declaration that was the lead in a letter that he wrote to us his uncle that was a tory and went back to england, clear evidence of his grief and love for his mother so you can feel this going forward but it has to do with the idea that it may be kind of going on behind your back most of the time but he said over and over again i want to build this ideal republic because this will be the best way i can have an ideal family and every man like me can have one as well. >> kind of curious of one of the great relationships of that period between a man and a woman

was john and abigail adams. i'm wondering did you look into how their relationship might have had some kind of influence on jefferson, his relationships between men and women? >> i think it may have been i don't want to be like them. [laughter] he was a great admirer of abigail adams, they were good friends. it's actually abigail adams who when they finally put a little jefferson and sally hemingses on this boat it goes not to paris where he is but instead london and abigail and john adams are there at the time so it is abigail adams who collects them off the boat and because he trusted her because there were already friends, they had gotten to be friends in france he didn't want anything approaching an egalitarian relationship with women. that is another piece of connection to the sally hemingses. she was his wife's half-sister.

one of his daughters married like a third cousin. the other married a first cousin , and his notion is he wanted women who would obey him, not pushovers and not dummies. he educated his daughters to be ideal plantation mistress is but also to be educated women to be he said i educated my daughter's above their sex because i calculate their chances of marrying a blockhead at 8-1. so he'd better do this. [laughter] i don't -- he thought they were yankees and to him that was an exotic species as well that he admired abigail adams and in fact when polly died she wrote him a very touching letter but a letter that was a funny letter because at the end she said iraq -- remember meeting pauley and this was after the long sally hemingses scandal and the

horrible things jefferson caused journalists to write about john adams and she said i never thought that i would be writing you a letter because you are so estranged but my heart goes out to you because i remember pauly so well and meeting her she said under circumstances most peculiar. [laughter] so she's reminding him sally hemingses was there too. [laughter] >> was selling hemingses common knowledge in this time? >> yeah, this was the first great american presidential sex scandal, so when he was in the white house, this was 1804, he had to run for reelection and in 1803 their starts to be the kind of inkling about our president and involved with somebody then there's this journalist named james thompson calendar he was an english radical who had been jefferson's creature. jefferson had been painting to say horrible things about john

adams. hermaphrodite that isn't even a woman, this kind of stuff about john adams. but calendar turned on him when he refused to give him a post office, postmaster job, and he was in virginia and he had been collecting dirt on jefferson and so he publishes these things in the virginia federalists' saying our president has this enslaved black mistress, they have children running around monticello who look just like him so this gets the press, and at that point you say all right, what should we do? what is he going to do? the first thing he does is to say nothing, right? i did not have sex with that woman. [laughter] minow? [laughter] but what he did to -- heated to things. the first thing he did was he insisted that his daughters come to washington, which they work not willing to do. they said we don't have the right shoes, we don't have way

this, just like dolley madison will buy you some. they had to go to washington and do this, stand by, do the whole eliot spitzer, hillary clinton. [laughter] they had to go fly the flag for him. he kept them out of public life except for that and he said we did this for you once, we are not doing this again. we are not doing this. that is the first thing. so he made them to fly the flag for him to back him up. the second thing he did was of course, you know, they are certainly letting him know even if they are not say indirectly could you get rid of her. what do you think madison and monroe are saying at this point? it's like you could sell her, right? so her to another plantation. he wouldn't send her anywhere. she went nowhere. he sent her to his mother's house which was 200 yards from the big house. [laughter] so he kept her a around through

the scandal so i think that says something about his loyalty to her anyway. i've got a feeling we are running out of time so think you all very much. i would be very happy to sign some books. thanks. thanks a lot. thank you. thank you. [applause] >> thank you all. >> virginia speed is a history professor of university of new mexico and holds the women of the west chair at the national center. for more information, visit our web site, virginiascharff.com. david has covere cd severala different wars and was a free

ancer who worked for c-span ani an iraq and afghanistan. david axe, where else have you worked >> guest: lebanon, chad, east timor, off the somali coast chasing pirates, i might be forgetting a few -- nicaragua. here and there. >> host: that doesn't sound boring. >> guest: right. the title's meant to be somewhat ironic but not entirely. war, the modern experience of war, low intensity warfare is a lot of sitting around. it's 99% waiting and tedium and bore dumb punctuated by 1% of sheer terror. i think that describes the experience of the typical soldier, but it's the same for reporters, too, between the red tape and the logistic and the distances you have to travel, the logistics of being a reporter, arranging interviews and negotiating languages and cultural differences. you spend a lot of time weeding

and maneuvering for the golden nuggets of excitement or the tiny little gems of a good story. >> host: and this is done much like, as a comic book -- >> guest: right. >> host: in a sense, a nonfiction comic book, and you write, i love how war made you appreciate the little things. you said coming home was like popping ec that si. what do you mean by that? >> guest: i've actually never done ecstasy, but i imagine it feels ecstatic. you spend time roaming around a place like somalia or chad, and it puts into perspective, i don't know, what we have here in the united states and what we call problems. so one reason i enjoy my job as a freelance war correspondent, or enjoy's not the right word, one of the reasons i find it fulfilling is it contextualizes the rest of my life.

and i've come away from my work as appreciating being an american more than before i did this kind of thing. >> host: when you read your book, it doesn't sound like you could stay in the states very long before you had to go back. >> guest: well, that's the irony. when you need that contrast between home life and life in some conflict zone in order to appreciate the home life, and you have to keep going back to the conflict zone in order to keep that and to maintain that contrast so that you can, i don't know, that's the only way i can find peace and satisfaction was to move between these two extremes. the one made the other make sense. >> host: david axe, what work did you do for c-span? this. >> guest: i shot video and have done voiceover and studio interviews from and about the iraq war and the afghanistan war, piracy, the conflict in central africa or conflicts in central africa, and that might be all.

i think so, yeah. >> host: ptsd? this. >> guest: myself? not formally diagnosed. i had a rather hairy experience in chad in the summer of 2008 and came home feeling not quite like myself. and managed to, you know, through the help of family and good friends and a lot of beer managed to right myself, i guess. i don't think that the trauma i've experienced compares to what an american soldier who spends 15 months on deployment in afghanistan or iraq, my experiences don't compare to that, but sure, sure, i've had some stress. >> host: we're going to put the numbers up on the screen in case you would like to talk with david axe about how journalists cover war and how it effected them. these are pictures here, these are drawings of when david axe went home to detroit. and what i noted on these is that you slept in quite late

every morning, and you didn't look like you were terribly thrilled about anything. >> guest: you mentioned ptsd. probably the worst i've had was in 2008. prior to that i was in somalia in late 2007 and also a very difficult place to work. and came away from that, i don't know, with a rather bleak outlook and crashed, i guess you could say. i needed, i needed some time. and i took that by moving back home, you know? a 30-year-old man moving back home with mom and dad, and i did nothing for as long as i could stand it. and i think had i not done that, things would have been a lot worse. so, yeah, i slept in. played video games. [laughter] >> host: what were some of the worst experiences you had? this. >> guest: i was briefly kidnapped twice in chad. actually not covered in the book. hinted at at the very end of the book. in somalia i spent some time in the after guy ya refugee camp

with, among -- surrounded by one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, made friends with somali reporters some of whom have since been seriously hurt or killed. that has been very trying. iraq and afghanistan there is always those bursts of extreme violence that rattle you. i think in the balance, though, somalia and chad have been my, the most difficult places to cover. personally and professionally. >> host: how did you get started in this line of work? >> guest: in 2004 and 2005 i was, i was a full-time political reporter in columbia, south carolina, for the local free times newspaper. and if war is boring, then peace is way worse. and it was driving me nuts sitting in on county council meetings and things like ordinances. so i had an opportunity to embed with the national guard in early

2005, took it, realized not only could i enjoy it, but i could do it. so i quit my job and began freelancing from conflict zones full time. >> host: 202 is the area code, 585-3885 in the east and central time zones, 585-3886 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. where was the last place you've been? >> guest: i just got back from congo, and the artist on "war is boring," matt, he and i are going to collaborate on an entire graphic novel -- >> host: novel? >> guest: right. well, it's nonfiction, a nonfiction comic book about congress go. >> host: why? >> guest: congo's probably the worst war that most americans don't know anything about. no one is exactly sure about the numbers, but in the past 15 years at least 700,000 people have died in several overlapping conflicts. it's a gigantic country, lots of problems, and a country that

really matters to the developed world. leaving aside humanitarian issues which, of course, matter on their own, congo's the source of horse -- most of the earth's rare minerals. without congo, we wouldn't have this high-tech society that we have. so conflict in congo should matter a lot more to americans than it does. we want to draw some attention to that. >> host: in iraq and in afghanistan, were you embedded with the military? what was your experience working with the military? >> >> guest: i've had really good experiences, i've had really bad experiences. the u.s. military is a vast organization, and everything sort of turns over every three years so it's a different cast of characters. once i inadvertently reported on a secret technology in iraq and was detained and then booted out of the country by a very irate u.s. army. that was probably the low point, but there have been high points as well. i've witnessed incredible

bravery and sacrifice even on my behalf by soldiers in iraq and afghanistan. >> host: how did you find that secret technology? the u.s. army, and i was working as a freelancer for wired at the time. i said to this lieutenant, what's that? and he said, oh, that's a blah, blah, blah, and i said, oh, that's interesting, tell me more. so i was taking notes on this bit of technology, lo and behold, it was classified. i didn't think that, apparently the lieutenant didn't know that and, yeah, it got bad real fast. [laughter] >> host: david axe is our guest, "war is boring" is the book. fredericks burg, virginia, you're on the air. please go ahead. >> caller: hi, mr. axe. you commented on it -- >> host: fredericks berg, you with us? >> caller: yes, i'm here, can you hear me? >> host: yes, go ahead. >> caller: i wish you could expand a little bit, i've always

been interested in how the unique military cultures of the marines, the army, and the special operating forces, what differences you may have seen in the fact that there's three branches that are doing this kind of work. >> guest: i don't really have special forces, but i have worked with the marines and the army, the air force and the navy and even the coast guard. i guess it's cliche, but honestly working with the marines is the best experience. there's a kind of culture of accountability and sacrifice in the marine corps that, while present in the other branches, is amplified in the marines. i guess they're able to hone that in a better way than with a vast organization like the u.s. army. so the marines have always taken really, really good care of me, and i'm grateful for that. >> host: emporia, virginia, you're on with david axe. >> caller: good afternoon. my question was, basically, being a war correspondent do you have to go through any

specialized training at all to be in conflict zones? >> guest: no, i didn't. in the beginning of the iraq war, the pentagon rounded up some reporters and put them through a reporters' boot camp in anticipation of the invasion and having embedded reporters. but once the embed program had sort of found its footing -- because i didn't embed for the first time until early 2005 -- by then they weren't doing those boot camps. and i found that the military was, by that point, experienced enough in handling reporters that they were able to just accommodate me in the conflict zone and point out what i should and shouldn't do without putting me through a formal training program. >> host: who was or who is ahmed zia in afghanistan? >> guest: he's one of my fixers. as a reporter working in a conflict zone, you utterly rely on your local fixers to drive you around, to keep you safe, to interpret, and he was one of my better afghan fixers. there are good ones and there are bad ones. the bad ones will squeeze you

for cash, the good ones will save your life. >> host: how do you find them? >> guest: networking. i find other reporters who have done similar work and get referrals and check out these people, cross-reference and then cross my fingers. >> host: you start to tell a rather homophobic joke with ahmed. >> guest: well, that's afghan culture for you. [laughter] >> host: you write that you came back from afghanistan with, basically, a low-grade anger. why? >> guest: i came back from afghanistan the first time in the summer of 2007, so by then i'd been covering primarily american-led wars for nearly three years. and it was frustrating to come home to a society that didn't seem to realize it was at war. certainly, soldiers and airmen and marines, sailers deployed overseas, they know they're at war. reporters who cover the conflict, we know we're at war. our elected leaders probably sense that we're at war. but it's easy to get the feeling when you're just walking around

small town america or in many detroit or d.c., wherever, a lot of americas don't seem affected by these conflicts. i'm not sure who's to blame for that, but it's not healthy. >> host: "war is boring," is the book. cold spring, texas, please go ahead. >> caller: yes. i personally experienced post traumatic stress syndrome after my husband was district attorney in an eastern county, and what i found was i could not sleep for months and months and months, and i was just wondering since he refers to having post traumatic stress syndrome, did he have insomnia? ..

when i would wake up in the middle of the night and this is when i was back home because i would go back and forth between home and iraq i would wake up in the middle of the night and have no idea where i was coming and that is probably the most terrifying thing psychological effect that i suffered. so i would spring out of bed at three in the morning in the utter darkness at home in columbia south carolina and began sprinting around my apartment running into things because i had no idea where is. was. my that i think my brain had adapted to doing this kind ofwo. work and i don't suffer thosee o kind of things anymore. >> you know they have some really good postulate in moshu mogadishu, you quote yourself been the expression on your parents face is rather priceless provided you include that? >> guest: i came home from somalia in late 2007 and crashed moved in with my parents. i think they at first struggle to understand what it was i was

dealing with. the memories, the experiences, the disillusionment being broke and feeling under appreciated. just the sheer psychological effects of covering more. there were a few, i think, tends dinners as they tried to tease out of me what was troubling me. and it was not always pretty. >> here it is. "war is boring" by david axe. new american library is the publisher. a birdie you go next? >> guest: i have not decided yet. every time i come home from a war zone i announce that i've retired. i'm in retirement. give me about six wee miami.

coming up from the 2010 miami book fair international to authors discussing their books including sebastian junger who wrote war, and karl marlantes come author of matter horn. this is just over an hour. >> thank you very much. really it is a pleasure to be here with you all. i met karl two months ago in california, and or seattle, sorry, and we had an amazing