rock bottom remainders by double nepotism because my brother is dave barry, the lead guitarist, sort of, and kathy of course founded the group. >> thank you both very much for your time. >> .net marine captain thomas daly talks about his expenses during the first six months the surge in iraq. he presents his book at barnes & noble booksellers in washington, d.c.. this is just over 30 minutes. >> i've got a couple of minutes i want to go over with you. was on to say thank you for coming. i know you are taking time out of your busy day and scheduled to come under and listen to one marine speakers i would appreciate it. so before we begin iowa kind of you guys idea of the actual agenda i'm going to be talking about, one of the specific toxicologist opportunioperative you guys an idea of what is rage

company come what is the book about, where does it take place? why not give you a piece about the author, myself. i'm going to tell you about the city of ramallah. and in the book is separated into two different books, the first half and the second half. once we get into it you understand what i'm talking about. that will drive us into what i wrote a book or i'll go with the importance and lessons of rage company and i will take your questions and a book signing after that. so rage company, anbar province, 2006-2007. elements of the 15th bring expedition her unit are sent in to iraq. it's spread across three cities. it's kind of necessity by an intelligence assessment by a marine colonel that said anbar province was not winnable. he saw the situation degenerated for the near future and that success was unlikely. however, with the city of

ramallah from november through march of 2007 the city went from averaging 31 attacks a day to less than one. such a pretty significant change in the rage company will tell you about what happened. why that is, how it occurred and kind of give you the idea, how does that tie into tribal warfare at its core. so before we get into too much about the book give you some about myself and my father was a career marine for 20 years. i grew up as a military brat and go into military bases but i never spent more than three years in any one place that i went into the marine corps straight from the rotc program in college. my career progression was that of an artillery officer. went to my first two years were training. after spending about six months in the fleet i picked up with the 15th unit as attachment to second battalion fourth marines. i was a forward observer which is typically a rule of cordoning

artillery, close air support, heavy machine guns, but when we deployed to iraq i had a good conversation with my company commander about what it was exactly that he wanted me to do. in the urban environment you're not dropping a lot of artillery. artillery officers become civil affairs, public affairs, kind of handing out pamphlets trying to to interact with the local population. i didn't want to do that. i would do something i was more meaningful. it doesn't have an intelligence officer.

we decided we're going to create my forward observer team into intelligence section. as you go to the book it paid off. it made huge difference. it's kind of the peas that you think about police work and counterinsurgency. it is about police work. but for police, for every four police officers you have to detected. within the military you don't have that. you have nine guys per 800. that creates a problem for the dissemination of information and things of that nature. enough about myself and my background. the city of ramadi. ramadi is the capital of anbar province, about 400,000 people. is a very urban environment, very condensed. most of the houses are small forces. they have a court yard wall.

it's an interesting dynamic. you'll see from the onset there is a marine who shot. but just getting that going back to the combat outpost which they had more than seven minutes away from, only about 200 meters, was tough. because the governmenurban if i was in iraq, a very condensed by. it's block to block, small fortresses every single house has a wall and retaining wall on the roof. so clearly fighting fortress from fortress. the insurgents within the city of ramadi. ramadi was so eager to have sunnis -- interesting dynamic is al qaeda in ramadi was not that strong. it was saddam the insurgents. so al qaeda was basically a foreigner just as much as we

work. when they came into the local populace, when interacted they were not seen as iraqis. they were seen as outside. that kind precipitated this when we entered the city of ramadi. we would a population that was at odds with al qaeda. granted, they were not helping america but they were not helping al qaeda either. so we kind of went into this opportunity, if you will that a lot of people didn't recognize at the time. this is the very early fall of 2006. the first half of the book, rage company a rise in ramadi in november. we conducted a cemetery in level operations, numerous small patrols and whatnot besides that. on our seventh large-scale battalion size operation you could describe them all as conventional style operation. we were taking what we've learned in fighting in the military like a soviet style army and we're trying to apply to a guerrilla movement.

the fx were pretty unsuccessful. our planning for these operations would literally take about 36 hours so for 36 hours we were on the base talking about what we're going to do. then we went to the execution phase. the execution phase was no longer than 12 hours. we took about 36 hours what we're going to do for about 12 hours or so interacting with people's standpoint you are not doing much. for those 36 hours talking to one another about how you coordinate your tanks, your aircraft, get off your supporting elements in place, the enemy is out there in the enemy is influencing people and you are not. so it also drove another thing that people didn't want to work for us because we were not the dominant force on the street. the insurgents were. when people don't want to work with you it's hard to get intelligence about who the insurgents are. we go out and execute these operations. we would bring back 20 to 30 insurgents every time.

we bring them back and we had no evidence these guys are doing anything wrong. we had intelligence that said this individual is doing something wrong. and less we find actual evidence in his home like weapons, explosive material, ied making wires, things of that nature, you can't prosecute. we were trying to institute a democracy would have to be a preponderance of evidence to put these guys in jail. so without that kind of link to the populace that would give us the information we needed it was a catch and release program. we would grab guys are the houses, risk our lives to do so then we watched 95% of them go right back to the street. and other problems if you do try and prosecute one of these guys and they didn't get convicted, we would pay them $14 a day. so a lot of these guys come insurgents, this was the interesting fact, almost every single high level terrace that was one of our targets we had his picture in an orange jumpsuit. he had been captured before. released.

so it was kind of a requirement with al qaeda and iraq that in order to be promoted he had to be caught by the americans and released at some point or almost all of them had that happen. so that was another problem. the detainee process in and of itself was not successful. it to the civilians do not want to work with us as well because they watch these guys go right back out on the street. so that's kind of the first half, conventional operations against guerrilla warfare, not working for the second half of the book is a lot different. you will see the first eight chapters on the first half and second have start in chapter nine. chapter nine something very different happened. you have these guys we call the scouts. this is the origins of the inboard awaking. i kind of db this guy the story. i was running between logistics movements, but immature guys around, bringing ammo out and i got this call from the task operations is that there were 25

locals that want to help us out. from a marine's standpoint 25 locals, i don't know what that means. i got in my vehicle, drove outside the base and our 25 guys waiting for me to talk to them on the other side of the road. obviously at the bike and trucks with all the machine guns on top, i had them all pointed at these guys. walked over there, there was one individual, very tall, lanky guy standing out front. he told me he wanted to cooperate with the americans. and from that point on all of our operations change. the way we did everything changed. the battlefield changed. these 25 guys, we have sensors problems at first. these are 25 iraqis who are also dumb us, these were the guys i envisioned killing when i arrived in iraq. they were not offering to us. a lot of mistrust. no one really believes one another can believe what each of

the center you'll see in the book that there are times were had to lie to each other in order to get one another to do what we wanted. but the moment we execute a mission together it was very different than the first nine battalion level ops we did before. we try to spend time with these guys planning, how we would use tanks, aircraft, supporting elements, engineering assets to clear the roads for us. these guys were like, why would you do that? we know where they are. let's walk to the house, grabbed it and we are done. you don't need to plan anything. very different. we wanted to start all of our operations as soon as it got dark because we want to maximize the darkness so we could get as much done in one night as possible. waiting to do that, they'll be asleep if they won't want to get up and run away. they will be laying in their beds by the time you get there. so we didn't get in the first operation we got 28 guys. 20 al qaeda insurgent. every single one of them prosecuted. local sworn statements from citizens think this guy is a bad

guy. this guy has killed local civilians. every single one of them prosecuted turn them. but from that moment on the local population looked at us and said hey, they are grabbing the right people. when they had confidence in us, confidence in the iraqi government, became change. we couldn't handle the information that they were giving to us but it was unbelievable. so what happened was as we got more information, as we can more effective al qaeda became orbiter to see in the first eight chapters, a couple of marines are wounded, we didn't lose a single marine in the first half of the book. in the second half we take three kia's. so the more effectively work the more marines were being killed. sometimes he wouldn't say necessary that make sense but you got remember that warfare is an art, not size. you can do all the right things and somebody is still going to get you. you can do all the wrong things and nobody will get killed. that's a very important point because a lot of times when i'm

watching the news it's frustrating to see we are losing our guys. you've got to remember is it for something positive or not? that's kind of a key point. will get into the air as to what i wrote the book. but as we became more effective and al qaeda became orbital company kind precipitated the population had to do something. al qaeda was kidnapping local people, talking them, beheading them, trying to figure who these guys that were helping the americans were. the more they did that the more they pissed off the people. we had a group that was going to fall. these chicks got together was off and provide weapons and we get a couple of practice nations as well. but it turned into a revolution where these guys just went all out. s. anbar province is a very, tribal society, the supporting of al qaeda and the americans and iraqi government fell along tribal lines. you have one major, couple major tribes in anbar province.

in the osha dozens of sub tribes and under those dozens of some drive your even more sub sub tribes. is a very interesting dynamic. when she gets them all together on your side and they decide to do something, without question it's going to happen. so when they kind of threw their support behind us and against al qaeda you had all of these rural areas, historically supported areas of al qaeda disappear. that's what the anbar awaking was in anbar province. that's what you saw places like ramallah which were the deadliest places in iraq go from averaging over 30 attacks a day to less than one. so the revolution that sort of card we had these local iraqi citizens kind of funding al qaeda was a store that didn't really exist out there. even on the brains because we were going back from iraq, they didn't even recognize if they kind of knew that things are getting better by the time we were leaving, but on ship and

your kind of reminiscing about what did the sergeant gave his life for? you are thinking about a specific incident. one marine was killed in a firefight in an open field that you are wondering what did his death accomplish? if you take it into isolated event you can't say it accomplished anything. he died charging enemy machine gun. there was no person who is trying to say. there was no heroic action that was occurring at the time. as these marines are coming back they didn't know the story. i can't do that is something they need to know and that's one of the driving imposes to write the book. what may really evident was as we were sitting back, i was watching cnn, this is the guy i the most respect for probably of all the reporters on the iraq war. this guy has been kidnapped by al qaeda and led to tell about. i watched them talk about the

success in anbar province as america hiring armed thugs to do the fighting for them. i started to think about that and i knew three marines who died in combat, not armed thugs. and i knew that we were not paying these guys to fight for us. these guys were fighting with us because they hated al qaeda. that's it. we were not paying him. these guys were melting down gold so that they could pay other tribes to help them. something that had been in the family for hundreds of years and they were giving it up because they wanted to defeat al qaeda. there was this disconnect between mainstream media and was on the ground. it's kind of the reality of warfare, there's going to be a historical take away from the iraq conflict but is that necessarily what occurred on the ground? who knows. but that was really the driving impulse for me to why i wrote the book. and it's important because we are in afghanistan or in afghanistan is even more of a tribal society than iraq. and as we look forward into the

confidence of the future, you look at the conflict that we have struggled with dealing with their guerrilla warfare, you've got to look at islamic extremism within the context. it's all guerrilla warfare. they pick that because that's what they are successful at. so it's kind of necessary for us to figure out how are they going to defeat this? how do we change the middle east? how do we change the interpretations of islam so that it is a place where america can feel safe? how do you win a war -- can you win a war on terror? those are all questions that have to be answered by someone. the war has to end at some point, right? if you look for in afghanistan we start to define our objectives. we have to realize what are we trying to do? we are trying to influence the people of afghanistan to accept democracy, their own version of democracy. and that's very tough but you

got remember that's all about the people. if you look at the operations, wasn't about the people. it was about the enemy. that's kind of where they have got us. guerrilla warfare is about tricking western way of war, different. they're trying to trick us focusing on the. you think about conventional military, intelligence drives operations. intelligence is always focus on the enemy. industries the enemy is al qaeda in iraq. the problem with that is really the enemy is not focused. the enemy is protecting people because people know who the enemy is. every good insurgent influence the people. he kills the ones that are against him. and he forces all the others into doing what he wants. so if you forget about him and focus on the people they will tell you who the insurgents are. that's the biggest problem that every counterinsurgent has a figure who the insurgents are. so that's the key point within reach companies you will see that in the second half of the book and you'll see the game

changer that occurred in anbar province in early 2007. so, that should the importance of rage company is understanding what took place in anbar province. so with that, i will open the floor up to questions. yes, ma'am. >> when you knew you were going to start to write, did you have any idea that you would be able to do this, or focus on english classes of in high school? how did that part of it evolve? >> that's a great question about, for those of you couldn't hear, it's about my writing skill and now as i was writing this book how did i know i was going to be able to do it. i was a european history major from university of rochester, no professional writing background. as the intelligence officer for the company i got every mission

debrief. so i debrief every patrol that when a. i was aware of everything that occurred. and so it comes to actually writing the story, you will notice when you're reading the book it is, there's a lot of close. i did some in depth interviews with marines in the country. this is a story about the company. it's not my story, it's trenches of star trek i try to going to make sure i was as accurate as possible. in order to do that i had to give you a lot of marines to reduce the it jumps. you'll see from my point of view pitch was hit from a lieutenant as a platoon commander's point of view. he was here from the sergeant's perspective. and especially when a marine was killed in combat i wanted to write from the guy, the on scene commanders perspective. i didn't want to write for my own. a lot of times i wasn't exactly a distinct i want to make things as accurate as possible. i think it really kind of drove my writing style. as someone who wasn't a professional, humor, writing

nonfiction, it's easier because i can follow events as they occurred. so you also pick up on that as you're reading the book that about not only do that as the occurred but my thought that you will see me second guess people. the tenuous a couple of pages later that i can't say you know what, i was the guy who is in the wrong. i've been judging someone else a couple pages before, but in reality he was right, i was wrong. you will see that very quick, chapter one right away. i'm the new guy, i'm second guessing somebody who has been there 10 months, and it's very clear after a couple of pages that i am the guy in the wrong. but yeah, no real professional writing background. just a european history major from the university of rochester. [inaudible] >> i was kind of surprised that i expected it to be more red when i got back. but, you know, they want to keep the voice of the author. but oh, yeah. trust me. i got a lot of edgy and i'm in looking at it thinking, because when you're editing it's a matter of fact.

they're correcting your grammar and whatnot your syntax. so i'm reading it and just kind of like, i'm done. it was interesting but definitely a lot of red ink. good question. >> what do your fellow marines think about you writing the book? >> a great question to a lot of the guys love it because this is really what they struggle with coming back from iraq. because you think about from the average lance corporal's perspective, they don't really know why they're doing a lot of the missions. they know there are specific objective, targeted this guy, in this house, let's go get him. they don't really know the full context of what are we trying to do in the city of ramadi. what we trying to do as a battalion, as a brigade? so what about the book i really want to explain that to them. that's probably the peace that they like about it the most. i've gotten some criticism from other guys that are in different

units. so as you can understand, combat is a very emotional experience. and so when i wrote, my thoughts, in the sequence that they occur, and dancing i didn't agree with somebody's decision, naturally people don't like that. so i got criticism about stuff i admitted that i was wrong. people were just, getting to that point but they weren't reading on. about me second guessing myself, second-guessing my own decision. so it was an interesting experience. all in all the marines of the company, they loved the book. >> can you talk about the image on the covers to? that's a great one. this gentleman right here, this is another thing i got criticism for. i got an e-mail from a fellow captain who thought that it was wrong of me to put a picture of myself holding a marines machine

gun. the problem with that is that's not me on the cover of the book. this gentleman is much better looking than me. but this is lance corporation will shows that he was killed in iraq the same time i was there. he was in the try it. this picture is from afghanistan which is an interesting fact because the book takes place in iraq. and another neat thing is you see what it's blurred out here behind the guy, those are all mouth. iraq does have very many mounds so we took those out of the photo. i was actually, i know for a long time for this gentleman on the cover of the book was. even after the book had come out i didn't know who it was. so i flipped open the dust jacket when they because again a question about who was that cover and i decided stop being lazy, the author but and figures out. so i turned to the photographers name. i looked them up on in a comcast e-mail address and sent him a

note saying, your photo is on the cover of my book. could you tell me who this guy is? and he sent me this note back about how they became friends in afghanistan. how he got to know him very well, got to know his fiancée and their child. and then he informed me that mike went back to iraq and he was killed. and that he knew his family, and so that was really moving for me because this book is about what the marines in anbar province sacrifice their lives for. i think that this photo of mike on the cover of the book, even though we didn't do it by choice, is supposed to be representative of that sacrifice. you can see that his face is not visible. it's locked out. i think that's for a reason because it represents all the marines who have given their lives in anbar province. that's a great question. what else? will yes, ma'am.

>> will you write another book? >> do i think i will write another book? that's a very good question. considering i didn't think as going to write the first one, i don't know. i don't know. got to be a cause that's worthy. so this was something that really spoke to me, it was an experience that kind of elicited a lot of emotion. it was something that i had to do that i didn't think it was a choice. i need of something else would be similar. yes, ma'am. >> how quickly after you got back did you start writing? >> that's a great question that i actually started writing right away. as the offense occurred in anbar province, the marine corps has a formal process we jot down what happened, try to put together as a lessons learned former. when i started writing it was to do that, to write lessons learned. about what occurred, how this revolution in the city of ramadi

took place, what drove it. and as i was doing that, i can't realize you know what? this is a great story. why do have to make it an action after action report that will get filed away and no one will reduce i started writing chapter one. and i wrote chapter 44 got back to the states. i still for about a month on chip, and i just took my time. it was the opportunity for me to just kind of sit there and write. workout, eat, sleep, right. that's what you do when you're on a ship. i added right into the mix. great question. yes, ma'am. >> you are going to stay in the marines or your out of reins? what is the career track, what you get in our state out? >> i'm actually out of the marine corps do. i work for itt corporation. so what is in iraq is all about influencing change on the

battlefield. so now and the corporate environment i'm focused on influencing change within a business. so there's a relationship there. absolutely. [inaudible] >> yeah, well, what people in the military had failed to recognize, and i am one of them, is that you have the ability to do a lot of things. it's very easy to get care stuck and really focus on what your specific objectives are. but he take a step back and you look at the big picture, try and influence the people. instead of focusing on the enemy you start focusing on the people around you, the citizens, their security, what jobs are they going to have, how are you going to feed them? it changes the way that you conduct operations. and so i think that's kind of what the military is starting to do. we have seen happen in iraq. we're taking that approach in afghanistan, and it is. the military is changing. [inaudible]

>> right, absolutely. it's all about the process. so the process drives behavior. our progress -- our process in iraq was convention about conventional star process they would go out on a mission and we would say we will clear this neighborhood. you will search every house for contraband, stuck in us both in and look for known terrorist. we would kick down every do anything to them and to the door and he was locked, blow it down. think about that. every house in the neighborhood, we are aggressive. we're wearing the last year. we have night vision goggles, body armor, pretty cool for me. i like it but you look at the and iraqis perspective. we are like is that they don't even have ipods. so think about so what nightvision goggles and all these cool lasers on the rifles. it's pretty foreign to them. they are scared. same ago, we taken every do in

the neighborhood, scared everything a person in the neighborhood. if you take a step back and look at what we do with these guys that we called scott's -- scouts, we only went to the houses that had insurgents in the. we taken the door, dragged him out and put them in jail and he didn't come back. then you people see that. americans know what they're doing a. give them all the information they want. it was very different. big change. yes, ma'am. >> you think we need to do the same kind of thing in afghanistan, like employ through tribal leaders to be successful there? >> absolutely. to look at afghanistan, we put a lot of money into the central government. that's kind of, you look at what happened in the and are awaiting within iraq, general petraeus authorized u.s. troops to pay sunni iraqis to fight for us. so what happened was your this revolution within the city of ramadi and and had petraeus come

out their review the results can he visited with the gentleman who was also met president bush at one point. so the cejka sort of the first shake to step up against al qaeda in ramadi. he is the one who declared this awakening. he had tv commercials that very charismatic and gentlemen. he was killed in september of '07 by an al qaeda suicide bomber. but once we had the success and what we saw was was occurring, that's when petraeus instituted the sons of iraq program. once he instituted a program, cities need jobs. they didn't have any jobs. they had no future, was played. especially within the government. so when we started giving them these jobs to secure their own neighborhoods he had guys lining up in droves because they wanted to work. they want to make money. they wanted to have a wife and kids. and so when we started giving them a future, whether with securing the neighborhood or an actual job, things really turned

around. and that's exactly what we need to do in afghanistan. if you look at iraq and afghanistan, the letter c. rates among the population is extremely different. iraq fairly moderate, afghanistan hardly anybody there is literate. in fact, a lot of my buddies when they're over there, the only person who is letter is the translator. everyone else they meet, not literate. so you've got a very uneducated populace which really necessitates you having to interact with them. and explain yourself to them. because we speak english and they don't. it's very tough. that's what afghanistan poses its own challenges. the taliban, taliban used to will afghanistan. think about taliban and iraq. they never ruled iraq. they were viewed as outsiders by most iraqis. the taliban don't have that problem. they have ruled in a place for

quite a while. so they are already kind of dug in. there's different challenges. you can't just say what we did in iraq, we will do in afghanistan. but think about the principles of the conflict and understand the needs of the people, that's when you can apply to both. what else? >> the dynamics when you brought these scouts back to the marines, at one moment patting them down and now supposed to work for the? >> yeah, so back, let me cut give you guys the situation. when i picked up these scouts, like we discussed before, taken -- taking them out to an outpost reach which was nothing more than homer taken over east of the city of ramadi. there's a map on the inside of the book if you want to take a look at where it's situated. this is the suburbs of ramadi. and there he goes historic are dominated by al qaeda. before we set up combos --

outpost compounds rage, we surged combat troops all over iraq. but getting back to your question, the marines didn't realize that operating 25 iraqis, all of them on, none of embedded -- vetted as a loyal source, they did know that i was bringing these guys back. so i drive into the compound and in the back of my seven-ton truck is 25 armed dudes that look like insurgent. emulate set up a red flag figures guys that we would've killed a couple days before, and now i bring an insider combat outpost so they can see where all of our weapons are, and they can plan their attack basically from the inside now. so i bring them in. we put them all in one room and crowd in there, but a bunch of

marines at the door, shut the door and we go back and talk about it in our little operation center. as we are talking about it here i've got all the lieutenants, platoon commanders telling me, what are you doing? what are these guys here for? they wanted to take them out right away. don't give them a chance. just kick them out. and eventually captain smith showed up and explained that i knew these guys might be coming. we're going to try to work with them. him immediately the first thing we tried to do is take away their weapons. that proved to be very problematic. the first thing we did was we said, here's 25 guys that want to hug you, they hate al qaeda, they are fighting al qaeda themselves. we put them all in the room and walk in in and say, you need to give us all of your rifles before we work with you guys. we want you to hunt down al qaeda and insurgents what you are likely to get shot at but you can't bring a weapon. they refused. they were fighting with us about we are not going to give you our weapons. we said yes, you are.

it just kind of back fired. so when that happened, we kind of took a step back. all the iraqis are saying we're not going to go with you, not going to do a thing with you, we want nothing to do with you. put us back onto trucks and drivers out of here. would have been gone too long. they will figure out who is working with you because of -- after birth these guys neighbors are al qaeda guys, supporting al qaeda. so they realize that if we do an opportunity we don't get them all they will figure out he is not home, those of you guys are probably working with the americans. what we ended up doing is we didn't have trucks, we like to do. they couldn't outside so they didn't know that. we told him we didn't have any trucks and we convinced for them to go with us. pick someone for them said hey, we will go with you, the rest of them were like, we might as well go, too. so very quickly read went out and it's over guys drive the

trucks back to another base and we and we went on our first op together and were very successful. it was a very interesting dynamic that occurred where we -- it almost didn't happen. it almost didn't happen. good question. anything else? with that said, let's do some book signing. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's website, thomaspdaly.com. >> every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of history, biography and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our programs. >> the reason i felt it important to do a book essay, because that's what it is, on the obama administration, is

because i think it's extremely important for progressive people not to create too many allusions about what's around. because they don't help. and to see in quite a hardheaded way what this new administration is, what it represents in terms of foreign policy, entry list continued he, and what it represents at home. and it's important to do that to understand to what extent it is different, and to what extent it is continuing the policy of the previous three administration. not just bush and cheney, but clinton and bush senior. and from that point of view, the balance sheet i have prepared, "the obama syndrome," war abroad and surrender at home is not a

very optimistic account, or a pleasing account of this administration. now, it's not a pleasant task to write books like this. because you know when you see what's going on and read a lot of material which has been published on domestic policies, let alone foreign policies, it's striking how conservative the administration has been aired now, i know all the restraints and constraints. i know that we live in a neoliberal period that, despite the crash of 2008, the system and its political leaders have not attempted any serious reforms which was necessary after that crash. and so the crash has not gone the way, simply been plastered over, and it is going to worry

people, and is worrying certainly progressive economis economists, many of them who are not that radical. so he was an opportunity for the newly elected president who was not responsible and could be held responsible for this particular economic crash, who had unlike previous presidents mobilized hundreds of thousands of young people in this country, brought them out into the streets to help him get elected, and had created the illusion that they would do something. i mean, yes, we can is not a very concrete slogan. but it offers some hope, or at least creates the impression of offering hope. because young people were happy

they were mobilized. and they thought that some change would take place abroad and at home. the balance sheet, let's first discuss briefly the continuity in foreign policy. now, the continuity in foreign policy was symbolized by keeping gates on at the pentagon. by essentially accepting the view that a surge in iraq have solve the problem, by sticking to bush's plan on a so-called withdrawal from iraq without bringing about any change there at all. by pushing these plans do, which are essentially very simple. withdrawing combat units from the main cities of iraq, building huge military bases in that country and keeping between 50 and 70,000 troops, that is

what the withdrawal is. and it's not new. the british tried it in the '20s and '30s, exactly the same plan, and it imploded when there was a revolution in iraq in 1958. and they have to, they threw the british out. and it's very likely in some shape and form, not in the shape and form of the '50s, but a similar thing will happen if these troops stay. on iran, once again this administration has carried on with the old policies, essentially in the case of iran at pleasing the array israelis. because at big pressure for not doing anything with iran both with a new the question and generally on other issues comes from the israelis who are prepared to do anything to preserve their own nuclear monopoly. that is what that particular

issue is about. and the failure of this administration to break with those policies of the previous administration is not all that surprising, because i remember as i point out in the book, i was in the midwest teaching for four weeks in urbana-champaign, and i saw this young freshfaced guy running for the senate called barack obama. and i was at the house of friends and he said he is a great hope for the democrats. and i said let's watch him, because i'm always interested in great hopes. and the great hope was asked, president bush has said it might be necessary to bomb iran and take out their nuclear installations, or whatever they're doing, and what would be your position on that? i support the president

ultimately, said the great hope. that was my first sighting of income and it just felt instinctively that this is a guy who's really going to try to please, and he is a weak guy in many ways, and is not going to push through some tiny shift in domestic or global policies. >> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name and click search. ..