crook's battle is an important piece of the story, and it speaks to the fact of what if they had gotten word? what if custer had the ability to have a gun that's between a machine gun an a cannon pulled by two horses. he was fearful that it would slow him down. there's all sorts of possibilities when it comes to looking at this battle. one more question. . .

he had a great time. he was beloved by all his classmates, but he was always getting into trouble, and every time he was about to flunkouts, he would realize, get thrown off, he would buckle down and work back read he was not stupid, he was pleading that image and i think it is about as good of training as you could have. he had a plan when it came to his time at west point and because plenty of people flunked out and his parents were the democrats so the whole family was politically aware, but you know, they were fighters in a very real sense. it was their plan against the rest of humanity in a way, and

would prove that way at the little big horn and they will all go down. >> [inaudible] >> custer seems to have been of german descent, but, you know -- custer would have no children but there are custers from other branches and custer would live on because of this battle and because of libby's wonderful effort as a spin doctor. [laughter] thank you very much. [applause] >> for more information about the author, go to nathanielphilbrick.com. pulitzer prize-winning

author sidley schanberg talks about beyond the cornfields a collection of his writings on the war. barnes and noble booksellers of new york city post this 50 minute event. [applause] thank you very much, lou. lou is the best author anyone can have in manhattan and he does this frequently and we are grateful to him for putting this together tonight. sydney schanberg is a very unusual figure in my life because he was not only my boss at "the new york times," but is also one of my heroes. very few people fallen to bothmo of those categories in my life. in the mid-1970s, when cambodia was falling, i was a brand new reporter i had never met signy and his stories, many of which are in this book, kept the news room on the edge of its seat in

a way that really nothing else ever did in my age here said "the new york times," and i have often written that the life-and-death -- the death and life of the magazine piece which is also in this book is the best magazine piece i've ever read, and i think that remains the case. sydney was a great editor, great columnist, and in this case, russell baker, as accurate as he is generous. there is a biblical quality to this story. what you have in this book is a tremendous bone showing piece of i and the witness war correspondence. what makes it extraordinary, however, what makes it transcendent and a classic piece of war literature is the story of the survival and the deepening affection between two men from different worlds, of any war in which the vital and inhumane have become commonplace

the two men are free reborn by discovering that their own humanity and in the and the have won a personal victory over the war itself. i met sydney when he came to new york to be the assistant editor, the deputy city editor and mutual friend, mardy arnold, took us out to lunch and i read everything that he funneled from cambodia, but i didn't know what had happened. at the end of lunch i said what happened to them still missing in cambodia but i didn't realize that and sydney said this will come out and she had this and his faith was redeemed, thank god. i'm going to read a couple things from sydney's book and then we are going to discuss it. >> this is a reporter's notebook the day before the false.

last night with the city facing imminent capture by the insurgents who surrounded the national bank of cambodia sent a cablegram to the irving trust company of new york asking the american bank where it presumably has dollar credits to confirm it was carrying out an earlier order to pay $1 million to the marshall wamble. the earlier order was sent on april 1st, david marshall, cambodia's former president went into exile after american trotting. perhaps marshall was worried that if it feel to the insurgents beyond the transaction is confirmed he would never get the money. how did the marshall come by the money? it was always rumored here he was deeply corrupt and used american aid to build a large account abroad, something i am sure no one in afghanistan is doing today. [laughter] sydney, how did you learn of this transfer? do you remember? >> yes i do. i was in what we call the ptt, the telegraph office, and a

cable came in and the bank was at the irving trust, the bank was explaining to the marshall that the terms delivery details the money, so sometimes if you hang around places like that that was a favorite place of mine, and i felt that was a terrific story and a terrific sort of piece about how corrupt the whole war was a. >> it's possible people in the outside world imagine bumpers falling down around us. sometimes near the front line things to get harry even as this is being written the sounds are fears just outside of the southern gates of the city but there have always been oases. the hotel pool i dined on what was vegetable soup accompanied

by 21-year-old regal and after that some brandy. i started to see 1:30 a.m. on april 16th which would have been but time in new york? were you 12 hours ahead? >> just about. >> i had to quote to working to get things revived. our line had been down since late yesterday afternoon and i was desperate knowing i would soon miss the first edition of my story. i spend all night watching bewildered mechanics turned on a they could not fathom preston to service because the insurgents had overrun the main transition senator. anyway, it is 7 a.m. now which was presumably the first deadline of the addition of it was 7 p.m. backend new york. how did you have to file in the last days? mostly from displease you just described? >> yeah, and was -- >> no satellite telephone. >> there was nothing like that.

and by the way, there was glorious because the telephone system was the same. you could call hong kong may be, but you couldn't call new york and new york couldn't call you. and that meant your editors were hogtied. [laughter] and all of the things they would dream up or what comes across the ap wire, have you got to this, all of those messages you run around like a chipmunk never came in, they left me alone which is the greatest feeling you can have because then you are totally responsible for what stories you write and what are the most important things to cover. and of course if you are wrong and then you come home and shame, but whenever. and it is a great feeling to have, you know, to be able to do that without people standing over your shoulder. charlie, are you looking --

>> i'm looking where to start this because this is when you get arrested. after a breakfast at a restaurant the french proprietor's who had no other food we walked back to the hotel and decide it is still safe to move around so we try to the biggest sibley hospital to get an idea of casualties. an american freelance photographer joined us. only a handful of doctors reported for duty. people are bleeding to death of the floors. a soldier caked with blood is getting plasma from one of the nurses who showed up left dying of severe head wounds. all he whispered over and over is water, water. hospital aides are trying to mop up some of the blood off the floor. you can stand toe with the scenes no longer so we depart. as we get into the car and start to leave the compound, some heavily armed soldiers charging through the main gates shouting and a greedy we've fossella of the car, put guns to our heads and order us to put our hands over our head. i instinctively looked at the

gallate, fixer, translator and close friend. we stand in difficult situations before but this is the first time i've ever seen a year on his face. he tells me stammering do everything they say. i'm shaking. i think we're going to get killed right there. but having somehow composed himself he starts pleading with them, his hands still over his head he tries to convince them we are not their enemy, merely foreign newsmen covering the story. the take everything, the car, cameras, talk-radio, knapsacks, pushing us into an armored carrier kind of light tank that carries troops in the belief captured from the government army. we all get in, three journalists and ever driver. we are continuing outside and naturally trying to get away arguing against it and into the vehicle most of my thoughts jumbled but i remember thinking for god sake, get inside. maybe there is a chance but if you go on arguing they will shoot you down in the street.

finally he claims in. the rear door on the top slams shut and the car starts to crumble for word. after a few minutes of chill silence, he turns to me and in french asks me if i knew what he was doing outside of the vehicle. i said no. he tells me that from trying to get away he was during the opposite, trying to talk his way into the armored car with the told him to leave, they didn't want him, only the americans and the big people. he knew we had no chance without him so he argued not to be separated offering his own life on the chance that he might save hours. as the armored car moves through the city it becomes an of an, sweat starts pouring off us. the people suddenly stops, to cambodian men or pushed inside trusten civilian clothes but he recognizes them as military men who've taken off their uniforms to try to ease the tension. one of them come a man with a narrow mustache running a t-shirt and jeans, reaches over and tried to shove his wallet into my back pocket and whispers in french that he is an officer

and must hide his identity. i tell him it is useless to hide anything on me because we are all in the same predicament. he takes the wallet, stuffers it under some saxby are sitting on. the officers companion in shorter man was crewcut in a flowered shirt and he puts the buddha in his mouth and begins to pray. the cambodian buddhist ritual to some good fortune against imminent danger. his behavior is contagious. i take from my pocket a yellow rose that my daughter jessica had given me two weeks earlier when i had taken a five day breather in bangkok with my family dillinger the fall of montanan was near. i cut off the wires dems and carried it in my pocket ever since my personal amulet. sweat has turned into a -- looking across icy in his eyes would also must be in my mind, a certainty that we will be executed. jogging to preserve my dignity to get terrible look of his face i hold out the rows and say look

i have a good look rose with me. nothing can really happen to us. he forces a grimace and i know he thinks i'm crazy. meanwhile, he's keeping up his pleadings with the driver of the karkh telling him we are not soldiers or politicians or anything hostile. no one here is american, he says, all french, only newsmen. whatever words we exchange among ourselves or in french. he speaks of religious we run our hands across our lips in a motion to let him know he should keep his mouth shut. suddenly, after 40 minutes the vehicle stops, the door opens and we are ordered to get out. as we move through the door, we see to cameroon soldiers with rifles on their hips pointed directly at us. behind them a sandy river bank that slopes down to the river. we exchanged the briefest stricken glances thinking the same thing, they are going to do it here and ruleless down to the bank into the river. but equine not like the zombies and no shots were fired.

he searches of a shoulder that looks like an officer. for an hour he keeps this up. appealing, controlling, begging for our lives the officers sends in motorbike to some headquarters in the center of the city. we wait, still frozen but trying to help us to continue talking. finally the courier returns, more talk and then miraculously, the rifles are lowered. we are permitted to have a drink of water. i look at pran and he allows himself a smile. he's done it, i think, he's after that do to retreat into what is it, the french embassy? >> that same day. >> the same day. >> they were evacuated in the city of 2 million people, they were hurting everybody out of the city. >> described the next couple days in the in the sea. >> they were serial. but i would rather talk also talk about what pran did just briefly. was the bravest things i had ever seen anybody do.

he was fighting this armored personnel carrier, and to be with us. i asked him some time later why he had done that, what were you thinking? he said i knew that you could never manage without me. i mean, that's a friend. so we became -- we were by then not just friends but brothers, and that's the way that it would always remain. pran has passed away a couple years ago, but as far as i'm concerned he's still with me. >> how many days in the in the seed for the cambodians were told they had to leave the embassy? >> about ten, something like

that. eight, nine, ten. and that was a horrible scene. we had fake passport for pran, but the french looked at it and said they will never believe that this man has that name. and what the name was, it was a second passport that john swain of the sunday times in london, he had a second passport with a blond name on it, his full name, and it was john uncitil bruwon swain. so what we did is managed to write it out. >> american, british passport? >> british passport. we've right out to john lewis swain and he was given the name oncitil brewer. most americans can't pronounced.

so we had pran standing to the site for hours for a couple of days practicing that man. but then the french officials cannot move the embassy and said i'm sorry, it is a pity but no one is going to believe this and then they might shoot everybody and that was the fear all along that if you resisted them, if you didn't do what they said, that -- were there was around 11 or 1200 people in the embassy including cambodians without a passport -- to make any communication between the embassy and the outside world in this period? >> yes, the embassy had for a while their own radio reaching the french embassy in bangkok, so messages were getting out, and but they found out about it and shut them down. the french council, who was a senior diplomatic person in that in the sea at the time, the rest

of them having fled before the end of the war, john rock had been a prisoner in world war ii, and derock, we were in separate buildings living on the sophos or the floor or whatever. he came into the building where most of the reporters were and he spoke to us because he was about to tell us that the atacama rouge had ordered him to get every foreigner without a passport whether they were muslims or whatever, to get them out of the compound and on their way into the new glorious agrarian revolution, which was a genocide. and he came before us and he was speaking in french and he told us about this and then he said

when we do things like this we are no longer men, humans, and he was crying and it was real. when we left we all were crossing and pran lifted a year earlier wanting to avoid a crash were being singled or something. there were five to words the northwest and four and a half years later i finally got to see him again. >> let's hear what happened. how did you first hear he was alive for and a half years later? ghats to that sequence. >> four and a half years in the life of sydney schanberg. >> it was. i had his picture on my desk the whole time, two pictures of him, one and close more for the beach

and then a studio picture. anyway, i immediately when i got back to the states, started searching for him by contacting various people live in new including people who had contacts with mercenaries in that area. there were a lot of, you know, people who were like pirates on land, and they would go and do things were rated the granular aires or something, and i found relief workers that i knew and gave them money so that they could offer iran some to these mercenaries. now finally, we did get a report from them saying that one of them had seen pran leading a bullet card-carrying rice.

>> did he recognize you by the picture? >> they recognized the name and i had posters on the border. couldn't be sure but it was pran. for years? >> it was about two years. maybe two and a half years, and then we heard that he had been killed. and that was less definitive story, but the story was that he had been fed to alligators and they did things like that. the truth finally came afterwards when we learned after he was -- after he escaped that there was one of his brothers who was in the cambodian army and he had been thrown to the

alligators. anyway, finally i get a phone call from a russian reporter but posted in paris, and this is 1979 now when the north vietnamese had gotten tired of border fighting with of the khmer rouge and swept into the country and threw them out of power and took over, and this was a man who along with some eastern european journalists who were being allowed in by hanoi to see what was going on in cambodia since it was no longer fully closed to the world and he was up in this group, this man whose name i don't have on my -- [inaudible] my wife reminds me. and i was shouting and crying on the telephone when he told me. he said i met your friend.

he said okay, i have a picture i will send to you. i was halfway to have been at that moment and the rest he didn't know that i had that information, but soon some u.n. people were going and i asked them to get in contact about what happened was they did. they went looking for him, not physically, but they put questions out and they came back with yes, he is there, he's okay. but we couldn't get him out because it's all happened too fast because that was at the time in october or late september of 1979 that pran decided that he had fallen afoul of spot vietnamese leadership because they had made him the mayor of the people what voted him mayor and they were getting tired him harassing for more food for his people, so, and

then he believes they found out that he had worked for a forerunner, me. and he wasn't sure of that but he wasn't going to take any chances, so he and a few friends started toward the border. he got there and he was facing thai soldiers of the western border and the sec you have no papers we can't let you in. and pran, as we know, was very skillful at talking people out of what the rules were. finally after about six or seven days they let him in. he got into a refugee camp, some missionaries from nyack, they got a hold of somebody and the called the new york office in bangkok -- "the new york times" office -- and henry called me that pran was alive and he was out.

and the michael pran's house, i mean the family's house. >> [inaudible] >> i know that. i know that. and i called and the oldest child screamed at his sister and two brothers that his father was out. dad is out, that is free. it was battling for a few minutes. would you stand up please. [applause] she's a really special person and this is what you learn when you live in strange places and new places and you meet people like this. she came to america the american

embassy evacuate they allowed us to get other people out. i went to the embassy and got permission for pran's family to leave and they left on that day and came to live in san francisco because of the large asian population that san francisco is known for and because there were shops and stores and all kinds of things that would be familiar to them, and then she didn't know anything about english, speaking english, and neither did the children, and there were four children, and she learned english, she got a job, they went to school, and she raised them for four and a half years in tough conditions because it was sent -- the new york times and i shared the costs.

there was a what what i call with -- it was an organization of -- an organization that look after refugees and the money was funneled through and they looked after sarah moon and she had a sort of case worker for a long time, a chinese woman who wore jade rings and expensive jewelry and so forth, and she had really very little empathy for refugees and i don't know why she was anybody's case worker. [laughter] but they're came a time she did something, and i won't mention it, but she said something terrible, something somebody had done something on a pleasant toussuire moon, and after months, sarah told me, and so i went to the head of the organization and said this woman can't be sarah moonves's

caregiver in a more oróñóñóññ caseworker. and i don't know if she was taken off the case. sarah can tell us that any case, when pran came out in 1979 and october, we met another relief organization and he was helping us with papers and i was telling him about this refugee organization and the case worker and i mentioned the case workers name and he said that woman? we call her dragon lady. [laughter] so i guess we have dragon ladies in all cultures. that's the story.?w >> was the purpose of the war correspondent? how did you see the purpose when you were a war correspondent?

>> well, what i came to know was my purpose. you start off having not seen where i was in the army for a couple of years after college, but i wasn't in combat, it was the cold war. the only combat we had was staring into the faces of russian soldiers at checkpoints. anyway, so you just have to find out what do you do as a correspondent you watch people and reporters that have been there for a long time coming and you learn things about yourself. i came to know there was no real reason to be war in cambodia and i don't know how much of the history but it's in the book. in america in our white house our president to find.

we need to clear out the sanctuary just inside cambodia and the eastern border. and the north vietnamese would come down the ho chi minh trail and bring supplies and operate from their and attack our forces and so forth and so on. so i think it was april 50th, 1970 he went on television and told people it was, quote, an incursion into cambodia and was going to last for 21 days or something like that. and i was just to go after the sanctuaries. well, when we hit the sanctuaries of course the vietnamese were gone and made a little noise i guess on the way. the had fled into the interior, and what followed was the war spread all over the country and the vietnamese began training of a local girl los who -- morrill

to -- guerillas. there was about a year before we were starting the war. bombing the ho chi minh trail and other places inside of cambodia. the leader of cambodia had given both sides -- the north vietnamese and us -- coyot permission, not on paper, permission for us to bomb and permission for the north vietnamese to bring supplies in also through the country's only salt water port. so he was on a tightrope trying to keep out of the war and a complete sense, and of course this now made the war spread the war all over cambodia and everything changed. and i came to believe that the only victims were the cambodian people.

at the time we did the incursion there were a group of about 3,000 to 5,000 men scattered around the country, and they were in no shape to do anything against the government. at the end of the war, there were 70 to 100,000. how did they recruit? the recruited something like when we talk about terrorists. they recruited young men whose families had been exploited by the people in the cities and the government and they were farmers and they got very little for their produce and then it ended up giving -- making other people rich. and they were primed for a recruitment. so, i wrote most of the time about what was happening to civilians and how many were going and how many were being forced on mr. holmes or even killed by b-52 raids because

they were working from our plans were working from old maps and they didn't have the fact that there was a school for -- >> hospital. >> anything, any public thing, a buddhist temple. so they drop their bombs and so forth. one day, just before the bombing was stopped by congress, and this was in 1973, august. a b-52 group, usually three planes coming and they carry something like 30 times each of bombs. one of the planes mistakenly hit a switch on his consul, and the bombs fell not on the target they were supposed to hit, but on the town full of soldiers and

soldiers' families. we only found out about it because people came fleeing in boats because there were no hospitals of many sorts -- of any sort. so it was the largest accidental bombing in the entire year vietnamese war. 170 people were killed, another 200 were wounded. pran made it possible for us. he bribed a can doherty in a patrol boat, and we were the only reporters to get down there and write about it. and so -- and by the way, our government decided we were going to help out these cambodian people who had lost members of their families or lost limbs, so we had a sort of money list. if you lost a limb they gave you

$50 if you lost two limbs, 100, and i forget the price if you lost a whole person. they announced that in the center of the village, a general did. and i thought yeah, that will bring them all back to the it wasn't that we were deliberately callis. we were ashamed about the accident, but that isn't the way to reward them and we shouldn't have been there in the first place in my opinion. that's an opinion, and it was an unnecessary war triet >> let's see if there's a question from the audience. we have a microphone for questions? >> hello mr. sydney schanberg. we spoke several times during the mccain and kerry campaigns. i was an organizer for vietnam's veterans against john mccain and john kerry. i'm here today because of the p.o.w. issue.

as you very much involved in that. and what i would like to ask you is there is a prison in a hanoi underground, 1992 the senate committee, our government has the gift and before, with nixon in '73 when they said they all came home, just there's no other underground facility were 300 americans were held after the war was over. i would like to know if you would be willing to go with myself to go over to hanoi and insist that john mccain -- >> is billy here? >> yes. >> how are you, billy? >> [inaudible] >> yeah, i would be willing to go, but i don't think it's grin to happen because i don't think they are going to let it happen. they would probably shut it down and the would tell us that, you know -- >> there's the peace in the book about the many americans he believes were left behind in about a failure of the

mainstream that covered the story. >> i would be willing to go simply because we would be able to talk with officials.s7s7s7s7 >> thank you for inviting mes7s7 appear.s7s7s7s7s7s7s7 now that this hass7 been raised7 s7want to tells7 you one thing.7 you are ones7 s7of the best in 7 business and you have done more7 for ths7ese men that were lefts7 behind it than any one person i know. [applause] >> never before about my congressional colleague john mccain, it is brutal. s3went out to the warehouse to get an advanced copy. i have read that chapter, and you are right on the money, sir. one thing you say is you thinkq3 there might speak some guys lef3 s3life and with great respect i3 object.s1 i have been trying to gets3 joh) mccain to go with us to thisq)q)

underground prison since 1992q)) and since 1992 when we confirme1 again q)q)q9qis1q)q)q)s3q)q9q)q)) help the tribunal convenes and i hope we can get in here, but th; war crime trials against theq9q9 leader of my party and theq7s3s7 presidential candidate of mys7s7 s;rty is pretty strong stuff,a;;

but leaving hundreds of men toq; their feet which john mccains; did and as you point out hereq9; sir.q;s3q;a;a;a;q;a;q7a; >> i apologize for interrupting. >> the question i want to ask is why do you think the mainstream press is -- god bless you. >> thank you, billy. [applause] >> in order to fully understand what billy is talking about ando beyond thato underground prison and our debate over how many iso not to me the issue. the issue is we have never, eveo tried to find out what happened to the missing men.o there are still roughly 1700o servicemen ando accounted for, missing and unaccounted for ando everybody just says we don't --

we don't know and stuff but don't want to go through all that. if you will read the article, i think it is chapter 7 -- six, okay. thank you, billy. [laughter] i didn't read the books lately. [laughter] if you read, and you read the evidence, and you think that what you have been told before by everybody, by the press and by washington across eight presidencies we have been told the whole thing is a myth.oo there were no men held back,o they say.o that is impossible.oo and we know that it's impossiblo because richard nixon himself io a message now declassified wrote in the vietnamese, northoo vietnamese premier after theoooo

vietnamese had released theiroo prisoner list and they didn't release until after the peace treaty was signed and he sent the message saying we have 300oo men in laos alone in the prisono and you were sending out onlyo nine or ten minutes that isooo inconceivable and it isoo inconceivable but let's say twoo months later nixon is onoo national television tellingooooo people all the men are on theiro oay home.oo the north vietnamese wouldoo matter of the or expand thatooo list. they didn't have anybody. and so, he knows that those 300o men -- he goes those -- and we are not taloking about what was in vietnam, so those are missino and they were alive and how dooo we know they were alive?ooo we know from all kind of things. first of all, the vietnamese, when the french army waso

defeated and i think it was 1947 -- 54, excuse me. the vietnamese also held prisoners then.o during our -- and the french rao some ofo them. they got it back.oo the didn't do it in public.o it was done behind the scenes.oo but our government went to theo reincorporation and to try too figure out what was coming toooo happen.ooo because we knew prisoners wereoo not -- they were giving us theoo right numbers all through theooo war, and rand came back and saio they are going to do the same thing they did with the frenchoo because that's the practice ofoo there's, because with the reasoo was, they wanted the ransomo money.oooooo theyo wanted $4 billion from uso ino reparations.o we promised them in the peaceooo treatyo at 3.25 billion, but ofo

course we knew what the timeooo that congress would never okayoo that.oooo the only way to get these meno back would be -- would have beeo to ransom them secretly byoo another method, called itooooo something else, what ever.ooo so we know all these things ando that's the evidence, yet yourooo question, charlie, about theooo oress, io can't speak for theooo press or tell you what they areo thinking. i know i talked to a lot ofooooo reporters, editors.o i used to send -- after i left times and was writing about this, i would send my stories to them first and they would say wo don't have it, whatever it was,o it was aon excuse that madeooooo absolutelyo no sense.ooooo the of no major newsooooo organization in this country hao ever made a seriousooooo investigation of what happenedoo to those men.oooooo why did they do that?oo one of the things was thatooooo everybody -- people in thisoooo

room, people all over theoooo country ran away from theo oietnam war after it was over.oo they didn't want to be remindedo of the various set of reasons. the only constituency, those men have ever had, real politicalooo constituencies are their families, and they don't get anywhere in washington.wwwwwwww what i am saying is thatw it'sww tiny so that's how things workw and we've come all the way andww lobbyists for the court towwwwww bureaucracy around washington and sow forth, wf

you mentioned in the necessity of war, not all war with something necessary. to what extent would you agree with the postulation that many of the wars in afghanistan now with iraq and the expenditure are really the driving force in the cause of the military-industrial complex think pending is a great

portion? >> good question. >> well, i am not -- i am not an academic to explain why her culture changed when it did after world war ii, good things happen in america. we welcome their men back. we have been saved from a terrible possibility. and they had done it. and we give them benefits to go to college, to buy homes with very small interest rate. and a new middle class happened. and i think that's really the last time we ever gave a hoot about men who went to war. the korean war was that cried. we didn't like that either. we couldn't take it.

the arena ticket tape parades. >> do you see them as was the choice that we could have avoided. the idea of trying to wipe out an al qaeda and extremist taliban and is a very good one and we started to do that at the beginning, after 9/11. and then we drop it because the real goal of that administration and they have been talking about it out of office since the mid-90s and they had a military manifesto that they wrote. this was one of those up eggs in washington -- think tanks. there is a group called the project for a new american entry. in this group was cheney and

rumsfeld -- anyway -- >> a whole bunch of great americans. [laughter] >> none of them had been there a shot by her in anger. he had never gone overseas. he was a flight or here in the united states. none of them knew anything about were. >> in any case, i don't know what to say. we are an unnecessary war now, but there's no way -- there's no really good way out. so what you do quite some people say we have to help pakistany clear up your area because of the back isn't there. pakistan has a lot to do becausy those are their friends. it's a field country, a broken country. a country that doesn't send they

to school. we asked them politely to please some schools because this is any exaggerated figure.y 40% of the children are educated or go to school. and i've been over there and not a long time ago, but recently recent years. if you want to see schoolchildren, the kind of people that should be in school in but not labor, making bricks and weaving rugs for export overseas. and i've written about it. the fact is how do we get the satellite. we have nothing in common with them. very off in they are just of convenience. thank you. we are going nowhere. we're not going to win anything in iraq. were not going to win friends in

afghanistan or pakistan. the mac we have time for one more. >> this is actually back to the hate. you were talking about how kerry and mccain prevented washington and getting attention, right? >> no, mccain push through bills that very documents. we know a lot, but we don't know the key documents that look to lead off this thing. and he passed bills that the bidding of the pentagon. in the documents are still buried.

and nobody can figure him out. i really do think he is strange things running around in his head. i do think a change from the way he lived and how poor a pilot he was and how different he was from his father in grandfather and now he never lived up to them if so forth. and i'm not a scientist or a psychologist, but i think there are somehow that's running around in his head. [inaudible] >> yes, he did. [inaudible] >> okay. but the real story though is yes, that's a very -- that's a very important story. that's a very important story, the pow story. but the larger picture is if

we're going to continue to go to war unnecessarily, to build the economy, look at what happened in iraq. i will probably end a cost in his $2 trillion because of the medicare and all the other expenses. it hurt our economy. it hurt our way of life and we are being told that we are surging in afghanistan. and if they hope. that holiday spirit i don't know what real good is going to, the, but i just think the current administration is trampling on hope and i think i'm next july when we are supposed to pull out, you better have something good for us because it's going nowhere. i reason for writing the book released in late insists. if are so passive about going to war and our representatives in washington are so past and india

get money from people who like to go to work, the industry is that make war and the organizations that send mercenaries to fight and all that kind of thing, if we're going to accept all that, will go deeper into the hole than we are now. i just think we're pretty deep messages. and maybe, maybe we'd never had an empire like rome, but maybe this is in that way because romanow and conquered all of these nations and then they sell and corruption. i think our government has an bad they come up as a corrective. i think this man who's in office mired. he wants to do a lot of things. i'm not sure he's going to be allowed to do it. >> thank you all very much. bring your autograph forward in sydney will autograph them for

you. [applause] >> sydney schanberg won the pulitzer prize for his coverage of the takeover of cambodia by the khmer rouge in 1945. his experiences were chronicled in the award-winning movie, the killing fields. for more information, visit "beyond the killing fields".com. >> we are at the conservative political action conference talking with author mark joseph about this next upcoming book. please tell it what its title. "wild card." >> tell us about the book and how you came up with the idea. >> short, i came up with victory in the 08 campaign. my publishers didn't think it would get out in time for the campaign, supported me that she is too updated over last two years. it's an overview of life, politics and synthetic worries.

>> so with all the books that have come out of batters in a way, what do you think is going to be new in yours that we have occurred before? bp country in the mac i think it is unique among the other folks, especially what is significant is this is really the closest of somebody coming from a pentecostal background, the wing of christianity has come to this high office. i think there are ramifications there that are interested in exploring the boat. >> dishy assist in the book or participate? >> no, it's independent. he might thank you very much. >> c-span spoke, abraham lincoln.

>> we are here at the national press club talking with christy miller about her new book, ellen and eat it. what inspired you to write about president wilson's wife's. >> have been writing about women in politics for the last 25 years and these women were very instrumental in the success of the wilson administration, each in a completely different way. alan wilson's childhood sweetheart had gotten into the white house. she died in office. after his stroke, edith wilson stayed in the white house, said they were very powerful women in their own date. >> tell me what to two women have most common personality

wise clerics >> they had very little in common except they were both devoted to woodrow wilson in which he needed and wanted. >> was there anything surprising that she found in your research for writing? >> well, he had a girlfriend, too. theodore roosevelt nibley said what is that the man with the romeo looked like a druggist apprentice? >> to be of a girlfriend with each wife were just doing one? could not just stirring one. the first wife really believed it could harm him politically so she acted as though the girlfriend were a family friend and basically co-opted her. the second wife did not have any intention of sharing him with anybody in the relationship really had come to an end before she came on the scene. >> how did either or both influences politics and policies? >> i wouldn't say either

influence his policies. he was a very deep thinker. he was not only professor print and. he written a number of books i was very intellectual. his first wife really help him write his peaches. she does great deal of poetry. she told him when she thought he wasn't being clear enough and contributed a great deal to his thinking overall. the second wife really have not had that kind of education, but she worked very, very closely with and altering his president he and when he suffered a massive stroke, eat-in month before the end, she knew his mind so well that she was really able to care jan even though he was ill. >> thank you very much for your time. >> claire gaudiani, a public service professor looks at philanthropy in the u.s. in her book, "rs