>> host: who are some of border's biggest creditors, and what have they said since the filing? >> guest: well, on the unsecured creditor side, the biggest one is the putnam group owing $41 million. other publishers, for example, one is out 33 million. random house is out somewhere around the mid-$30 million range. i think the only publisher issuing a statement is penguin. others have stated mum with respect to what's happening, and, of course, there are the larger secured creditors which is bank of america which held a credit agreement. they are owed $200 million, and ga capital is owed $50 million off their own agreement as well. they have to pay off the banks, the biggest publishers, and

landlords want what they can as well as additional creditors they owe $300 million to venders, and they still have to figure out how they are going to get paid. >> host: can borders emerge from bankruptcy with its remaining stock of stores, ect. and become a profitable company? >> guest: it would be wonderful to see them emerge as a more profitable cut company. i believe that many of the factors have enabled them to go into bankruptcy may not be kind and forgiving. to my mind, there's a little too much concordance with what happened with businesses when they went bankruptcy and went through the courts and didn't have an appropriate business plan and went into chapter 7. numerous reports indicated that publishers are not terribly

happy with what borders has in mind. their priorities are highlighting their border rewards plus card. if customers come in and know that the company is in trouble, do they want to redeem their rewards card or sign up for a membership in a company they may feel doesn't have a future? so i think unless borders has a really rock-solid strategy on surviving, they may suffer, but at the same time, we won't know for several months at the earliest. >> host: sarah weinman, thank you for joining us here on booktv. >> guest: thank you for having me. >> richard lowry discusses the battles in fallujah, iraq. the event held at the joint forces staff college in norfolk, virginia is an hour. >> good afternoon, again, ladies

and gentlemen. it's a true honor to be here today to speak to you about the battle of fallujah, and i think we've gotten started on the presentation. i sat after general and i talked about coming down and speaking to you all, i sat for many a day trying to figure out what it was i was going to talk about, and i went and prepared a standard powerpoint presentation with bullets and all the boring stuff, and i decided instead to make a presentation that is completely photographs, and what's going to be -- we're going to be flipping through in the next few minutes while a talk are the photographs of action out of fallujah that i believe tell the story much, much better than i can do with any words. the battle of fallujah was probably the turning point for

the beginning of the end for al-qaeda in iraq. up until operation phantom fury, the american military had become involved in an operation in operation iraqi freedom that increasingly became anarchy within the country and a rising insurgency throughout the end of 2003 and into 2004 so much so that the marines were asked to return to iraq and take responsibility for anbar province. no sooner had they arrived that four blackwater security guards were escorting a small convoy of flat bed trucks, took a wrong turn, and drove straight through the center of fallujah. we know the outcome. it was a tremendous ambush in which the four security guards were killed.

i liken that long term and poor judgment of a serial commander to the same thing that happened when the 507th maintenance company drove through. the results were horrible. more so, they had an impact at the highest levels of command within iraq. in nasaria, the 507th maintenance company gave the iraqis confidence that they might even be able to repel the american invasion in march of 2003, and goaded by the saddam regime, all the iraqi army and every iraqi with a gun moved to his defensive position waiting for the first battalion second marines to arrive.

that 507th ambush led to a horrendous day for the ray reins on -- marines on mar 23, 2003, and the same is true with the black water ambush. because of that ambush, at the national command level, decisions were made and orders were given to go in and retaliate for that ambush. american commanders at the highest level had visions of the blackhawk down incident and they insisted even after the marine commanders, general conway, had recommended restraint, they insisted that we move to attack in fallujah. as any good marine officer would do, they gave their recommendation to their commanders as to the best course

of action, and then when given orders, they said, yes, sir, and they attacked into fallujah without any preparation. the marines had been there only less than a week. there was no time to prepare the civilian population in the city, and there certainly wasn't any time to plan and operation. there was no time to embed reporters for operation resolve. the result of resolve was that the world started receiving reports that the marines were indiscriminately killing civilians all be it those reports were incorrect. the perception throughout the world is that the bad guy american up vaders in iraq -- invaders in iraq went into the fallujah to attack the city and kill civilians. within a week, the president was ordered to withdrawal from the

city -- withdraw from the city. again as any good marine officer, they stopped defensive actions within the city. they worked for the next several months to restore order and help the city. they tried to help the fallujah to stop the problem themselves. they asked them to set up the fallujah brigade. the problem with that is it was made up of baath party loyaliests, others loyal to the saddam regime, and many republican guard soldiers and former officers. again, they may not have been loyal to saddam hussein, but they had all lost their jobs. back in 2003, decisions were

made, and they were all made for good reasons, but some of them didn't turn out as well as we would have expected, and two of those decisions, i believe, were number one, to disband the baath party. anyone who was a member could not work in the new iraqi government. everybody who worked in the former iraqi government was a baathist. we legislated anarchy in that country. third decision was to disband the iraqi army, and, again, what we did was we helped to quale the an or kick -- anarchy because without an army the iraqi people and the new government had no way of enforcing their laws, and on top of that, we put most of the country out of work.

the fallujah brigade was at best questionable, and i believe most of the elements of the fallujah brigade were actually working with the enemy. in the summer of 2003, the em policemennation of the flew ya -- implementation of the fallujah brigade was a failure. they wanted to clear the city, but the generals were restrained. it was just not in the cards for general mattis to command the operation that would clear fallujah. given the opportunity, he certainly would have gone in and done that. in september of 2003, excuse me, 2004, general, then major general patonski came to fallujah in anbar province and assumed position. in that point in time in the history of iraq, it had become

evident that fallujah had become a gathering point for the inser jen sigh. -- insurgency. he ended up in fallujah. former baathists who were still loyalists, saddam hussein, exrepublican guards, soldiers and officers ended up in fallujah. there was a strong population of islamic fundamentalists that lived within fallujah, and many, many more that came from all over the world to kill americans. it became evident to the american commanders that there needed to be a solution in fallujah, that we needed to go in and clear that city of the terrorists that had taken a stronghold, a foothold within

fallujah. there were at any given time estimates of over 5,000 insurgents living and working out of that city, and there were spreading violence throughout iraq, and then returning to that city to rest and rearm. the american command decided it would be impossible for the elections in 2005 to succeed in iraq without fallujah being passed. general casey went to iraq and convinced them that a new operation needed to be launched to clear the city of fallujah. general was given orders to clear that city and he started planning and did the job right. he went through an extended planning process and the first thing that they determined was that there wasn't enough man

pour to main -- power to maintain security throughout the anbar province and to clear fallujah. general sattler went to general metz and asked for help from the army. they offered up five battalions, two mechanickized, to seven calvary, and two infantry from the first infantry division. they were mounted in bradlies and led by m-1 tanks. now the general had the punch to breakthrough the extensive defenses that the iraqi -- or that the insurgencies set in place in fallujah. along with that were through additional battalions to court the city and help isolate it from the inside and the outside

to allow nobody in and nobody out. an entire brigade head jr. quarters from the -- headquarters to help coordinate the city. even with all this additional army resources, both generals had a difficult situation in that they had to maintain security throughout anbar prosince, so they left units in the west, and they got to help with the black watch in the south, brought in a couple of marine expedition units, and they achieved a balance to keep peace throughout the province and have enough resources to punch into the city and defeat the 5,000-plus terrorists in the city. it's my estimate that tanks were

an e enormous asset for the city. they allowed our troops to move through the thousands of ied, traps, an bombs through the city rapidly, # get behind the enemy's first lines across the northern edge of the city, and shock the enemy and drive them back on his heels so that the four infantry battalions moving into fallujah could move in and clear street to stress. house to house, and room to room. they did that. in less than a week, they moved through the city and managed to get to the southern edge of the city, but they hadn't succeeded in clearing the entire city. it was six weeks before combat operations were really over in the city. the marines had to go back many times into the same house under the same street and clear room

after room over and over again. in 2004, and i think today as well, we are living in a world where it is of utmost importance that we think of the population first whenever we're involved in military operations. no one can ever win in a foreign land, a battle, without having the support of the population. the general knew this. they established what was an io threshold with the purpose of keeping operations such at the local level that the media wouldn't become overly interested, and one of the ways that -- well, there's several ways, but two of the ways i know

that the general worked to stay below the threshold was first in the rules of engagement, the first rule of engagement was to not fire unless fired upon. in today's world that poses an enormous stress on the young and men women that are fighting the battle going door to door. these brave young men, these specialists and corporals and sergeants went into homes never knew if there was an iraqi family, or an insurgent waiting to kill an american. they did did over and over and over again entering thousands of rooms. some of them lost their lives. fortunately, many didn't. it's that courage and determination that actually won the war. the tanks got us into the city,

but the infantry won the war because they acted with restraint when they needed and violence when it was necessary. the second rule of engagement was to use only appropriate force. orders were issued that if a sniper sniped at the advancing marines out of a window, you were not calling in an ac-130, but you were to use escalating force and only the force necessary to overcome that position. again, to protect civilians #, and sometimes it endangered our young men and women. the other part of not getting the io threshold was to get through the city as quickly as possible. it's like ripping a band-aid off. you want the least amount of time of violent action, and it took the marines and soldiers less than one week to get to the

southern edge of the city at which time the media lost their interest, and they left, and then we spent the rest of the six weeks clearinghouse to house and room to room. as i said just a minute ago, it was the young soldier and marines and sailors that won this wore clearing those rooms. there were nine navy crosses awarded during operation phantom furry, and 22 silver stars. i'd like to tell you a little bit about some of those awards. in this photograph right here, just happened we made it here at the same time. every one of the marines was either killed or wounded in action. the short one in the center without a hat is chris adlesperger. he won the navy cross by being involved with a fire fight with most of those marines, one of which was killed on november 10th in the fire fight, and

chris adlesperger saved three fellow marines from a similar fate and was no , nominated, i believe, for a medal of honor, but downgraded to a navy cross. unfortunately, chris adlesperger was one of those marines that later in december was entering a room with restraint and found an iraqi insurgent with a machine gun an rpk, and cut him down and killed him. chris adlesperger is one of my heros, but there are many. what i do in my book is i try to tell stories from every unit that was involved in the war in, in the battle, so that the reader gets a feel for all the different points on the battlefield from the escari district to down south. this happens to be major rob

driving through the area on point through the days of the war. the following slide will be the infantry following him. i try to tell a little bit from every viewpoint of the war, from a helicopter pilot, to a female major sherry chosen i believe her last name is, an ac pilot overhead keeping a blanket over the soldiers at night so the soldiers could rest without the enemy attacking them, to the third lar working on the shark's spin, and then each of the infantry battalion, the third marines on the east side of town, the 8th marines closer to

the center of the city with the 7th regimen, the 5th marines, the dark horse, and 3-1. i tell the stories of the army battalions that spearheaded the fight. lieutenant pete newels that went down on the east side of the city, the highest concentration of enemy fighters along the east side because they were building up on that side because that was the closest to camp fallujah, and that was the line of fallujah. 27 who went right up the middle, right down henry to break the enemy's back from the first hours of the fight, so i talk about each of those units. i try to tell most of the stories of the nine navy crosses and 22 silver stars. i also try to tell the stories of marine, soldiers, and sailors

who were wounded in battle, and some of those who we lost. then i tell stories of regular soldiers and marines who spent six weeks in hell just doing their job. it took all of them, the soldiers, the marines, the air force overhead, and the navymen and navy seal snipers to accomplish this mission, and i would have to say my heros of heros from the entire battle through all the research there i've done is a young hospital coreman, hawaii name is ron rubio. he was the only hospital with a platoon of boats from a small company and isolated the city

along the river, the eufhrates river in the west. he entered late. he was like 23 or 24 when he entered the navy. he was already working in health care for most of his teenage years. he told me when i interviewed him that he knew from the start that he wanted to work in a profession where he could help people, and he worked in rest homes a texas, and he got married, and he started a family, and he knew that he needed to do something to advance his medical career and also to support his family, so he joined the navy, and on 9/11, he was stationed, his first duty station was the navy hospital. on the morning of 9/11, he was called into a meeting where he was informed that a plane had flown into the pentagon, and he

and the emergency medical team he was a part of were being flown to the pentagon to help the casualties. within 15 minutes, he and his team were on a coast guard helicopter flying to the pentagon, landed in the parking lot, and he was only a hospitalman at the time, but he did everything he could to help the relief effort there at the pentagon. as soon as he left and came back to bethesda, he was told he would be on the hospital ship that was going to new york city. it took a few days to get there, and when that hospital ship arrived, by the time they tied up in port, they knew that there wouldn't be any injured people to treat, so the hospital ship became a gathering point for firefighters and emergency workers who were digging through the rubble. the hospital ship fed and gave

the workers a place to sleep, and very soon after they arrived, rubio went into town and found himself standing in front of the wall that had all the pictures and the notes of hope that somebody would find a loved one. he told me that he stood in front of that wall and it stretched for over a block, and he looked at it, and it changed his life. he said to himself, i know there will be a fight, and i am going to be a coreman with the united states marine corp. because they are going to need me. he immediately went back to bethesda and volunteered to be a marine. a year and a half later he was going through the streets with bravo company. he was shot at and nearly killed by a woman in a black dress carrying an ak-47.

when he returned home after of1, he found that his soon soon-to-be ex-wife had taken his children and had filed for custody claiming that juan had missed a court appearance. the reason he missed a court appearance was because he was in iraq. his company commander came to his aide and sent a letter to the judge explaning what happened, but juan had to go home and defend his right to maintain custody of his children. when he returned to the camp, the company had already deployed. he soon learned that major dan whit plan, a previous company commander and had gone through hell in nasaria was going to

become the officer of the small camp company of the platoon. immediately, rubio volunteered. he said if dan's in charge, i want to be there, so he and dan returned to iraq with a small craft company, and they ranged the waters of fallujah, of the eufhrates river in and around fallujah and in many other nasty spots. i want to relate to you a story, and this is not the story in which he was awarded the silver star, but it's another fight in which he was involved. i want to relate the story to you because it tells a little bit about how i do my research and how i come to tell these stories, and the unseen benefits that i have reaped from doing this research. i never knew that i would have the chance to walk among american heros. i never knew that i would have the impact that i have in

telling some of these stories, and this story will help you understand the gratitude i feel in my heart for being able to learn your stories and tell them. one of the first people that i interviewed after talking with general natonski was dan whitman, and he insisted i talk to juan rubio, and i know why now. he told me of a story of a mission they went out on in december. they had been ordered to go out and do clearing of cashes. there were cashes along the river that had been found and the small craft company boats picked up a unit from an army engineering battalion to go and blow up these cashes. they went out, and as any

infantryman knows, you should never return from a mission on the same route you go out on. well, if you're in a boat, you don't have an option. every mission that the small craft company went on on, they were ambushed on their return. they went out on the clearing mission, and as they returned from a successful day's work of finding and destroying a multitude of weapons and explosives, they were ambushed, and one of the boat's engines was disabled, and also four of the soldiers on that same boat were wounded, one severely. the severely wounded soldier had received a piece of shrapnel in his neck and was bleeding profusely. he jumped from a perfectly good boat on to the disabled boat to render assistance to the wounded soldiers.

. . one rubio did his job. he did it under fire. he was standing with 1 foot on one boat and 1 foot on the other hoping his wounded soldiers to move them across under fire. he said he could hear all its nothing tested had. and he kept a young soldier like until we got to the helicopter medevac.

unfortunately that soldier died later in surgery that might. the minute that i heard this story from one rubio i knew that i wanted to include it in my book. so i pressed him for details. i said you remember what day it was? and he said, what day? i don't know what day it was. all the days ran together when we were there. so i said, would you know what unit it was? he said they were soldiers. we were carrying soldiers. they were hitching a ride. i don't know who they were. i said you have any idea what the soldier's name was? he said no, i don't. so i got back in touch with dan wittman and i asked him for more information. he said well, i have all the writeups that i did, and rewards for all my min. some got awards and other student that i can send you all of my writeups. i said sure, please do. and he did. lo and behold, he had written one of his boat captains up for

a bronze star for that very ambush. and in the right up it said that the ambush was on december 5. so now i had the date. along the way, general 12 natonski had given me a powerpoint presentation that he gave after coming back from oif to end in that was a very extensive order of battle. and it had everybody that was in the first marine division in operations. and it showed that the 2nd brigade of the 2nd infantry division was involved. an army unit, the 2nd infantry division who are very very proud of their association with the marines, the teens team said they served under general lejeune in world war i. so, one of the people that i decided i was going to interview

with colonel gary patton who was the 2nd brigade combat team commanding officer. in my interview, i asked him, did you have in the engineers with you? he said certainly we have engineers. it was the 44th engineer battalion so now i knew it was december 5, and i know is the 44th engineer battalion but i still didn't have the young man's name. couldn't tell the story without having this young man's name. so during the course of my research, one of the things that i use extensively as google. google is wonderful. because it guides you to the right places. it doesn't provide the information itself but it helps and one of the places that guided me to us a web site that i casualties.org, and on i casualties.org there is a database of every wounded in action and killed in action from operation iraqi freedom and operation enduring freedom.

and it is a giant database and it is listed by name, by hometown, by the unit the soldier, sailor or marine served inand, by the province in which they were killed or wounded and the date of the action. now knowing that it was in anbar province, knowing it was the 44th battalion and knowing it was december 5, went to that database and there he was, and pfc. andrew ward jr.. so now i had everything i needed to tell the story. i interviewed several more people from the small craft company to validate juan rubio's story story imported altogether and it is part of the book. on december 5 of last year, i posted that excerpt of that story on my web site to generate interest to help market my book. within 12 hours, i received an e-mail from andrew ward senior.

in his e-mail he thanks me for telling his son's story and he concluded with, i never knew what happened to my son. if i never sell a single look up "new dawn," i have achieved everything that anybody possibly could. i help the father get closure on what happened to his son. but because of the -- you know we don't have the perfect joint force get, because the soldiers in the marines and the sailors were intermixed. nobody actually knew what it happened to andrew ward jr. in the army command. and like i said, a repercussion of my research that i never thought would happen. but juan rubio isn't the only hero.

there is captain jeffrey lee, excuse me, the tenant at that time who was a tank commander, led the charge almost all the way through the city. at one point in time just south of michigan, he was involved in such a heavy fight that he could not move his tank. there were people shooting from every window, the rooftops in the doorways in front of him. there was a concerted defense in front of him. his gunner was rotating the turret while the loader was loading. as soon as the round was loaded, they would fire the main gun and then continue rotating until another round and they did it for 20 minutes. the they were spraying their 240 and 50 caliber machine guns for 20 minutes, until lieutenant lee ran out of ammo in his gun. he had cans of ammo on top of

the tank, so we open the tank, reached out in the tank and he is in an urban environment. it is a multiple story building. he looks up and write on his left shoulder is an iraqi with an ak-47 pointed right at him. the iraqi opened fire, shot him in the arm. he got a through and through one. lieutenant lee dropped back down into his hatch, his gunner started providing assistance and ripped off the sleeve of his uniform. and he found the only thing he could find to help him. it was a roll of duct tape. he wrapped his wound in doug tape and lieutenant lee continued fighting for several more days without getting medical attention. know what is. i could go on and on with stories about young men and women. let's talk about some women.

dr. major lisa dewitt after 9/11 again. basis of not -- there is a lot about 9/11 that and had his inspired a lot of our young men and women. dr. dewitt was a emergency-room doctor in miami and after 9/11 she decided she need to join the military, a lot like juan rubio, to help the soldier sailors and marines that were going to be in this fight. she was sent to kuwait, and she served her term in kuwait, and her term and her unit had ended but her term in theater had not. so she left her unit in kuwait after spending many months of treating the flu symptoms and delivering babies i would imagine and all the things a regular doctors do, noncombat doctors. so when her term is up in her unit, instead of returning home, she hitchhiked to baghdad.

she hitched a ride to baghdad and then from there, she started asking around for all the action was and she hitched another ride to look at dia and volunteered to be the surgeon for the second member tree regiment. she went with peter newell and his soldiers to fallujah and she operated a battalion aid station in the northeast corner of fallujah, trying to save lives. nobody tells her story. she did a wonderful job. there is a story about her in my book. along with the 22 infantry there were units from the north carolina national guard, and those units were a platoon of ambulances. and 113 armored ambulances. well, to back up just a bit, dr. richard jaydek was a

battalion surgeon of the first italian aids marines. they were further west than to too and a slice to the center of the city. they had a tough fight of it. and they had a lot of casualties that they had to deal with. dr. jaydek early on in the fight decided that he needed to be closer to the battle to help save marine lives. so he moves and many battalion aid station into the center of the city, in the government city. and he borrowed some ambulances from 2-2 and along with those ambulances came the crew. there was christie knight was part of that crew. as were a few other women as well. so another little known fact is that there were actually women in the thick of the fight in the middle of fallujah and the government center. christine knight shuttled

wounded soldiers back and forth from their many battalion aid station to the bravo surgical in fallujah and comforted many a soldier and marine and probably saved several lives in the process. and then while i talk to you about sherry, who was the a c-130 pilot. while the men did most of the jobs in the fighting in fallujah, there were women that were present on the battlefield or about the battlefield that helped immensely, and i need to mention them because they don't normally get mentioned. i have got to review i think with one story and it is his the marine corps birthday. it is on november 10 and general natonski had gone in to see colonel tucker, the rct-7

commander at the government center. they made the decision to change the movement of forces in the attack south on the spur of the moment. the original plan was completely different from what they ended up doing. at general natonski had gone in to talk to general tucker about this change in plans and after general natonski left, it was marine corps birthday, colonel tucker had handed out pound cakes and general lishan's message and the commandant message to be read. and he said at some point during the day, i would really like it if you could play the marines hymn. so after general masson ski lefo calm down at the government center. lieutenant colonel at that time gary brandel said to colonel

tucker, well now is a good time to play the marine's hymn and colonel tuggle -- colonel tucker agreed. so they went over to an american unit and asked them to cue up the marine hymn and they started playing it. on the first note, every iraqi in hearing distance started shooting. every insurgent, all around, started shooting. they either thought that is was heralding an attack or that it was some blatant slap in their face. whatever, they started shooting. not only did they start firing, they started getting nuts. they started jumping out from cover to fire on marines. it was like a shooting gallery for the marines and in the government center. the marines hymn played and the battle raged. and on the last note, the iraqi start firing. colonel brandel turned to colonel tucker and said, that works well. let's play it again.

[laughter] never did find out if he played it or not. i guess i want to conclude with, to take some time to thank all of you, all of you in today's military are here because you volunteered. all of you have chosen to defend our country. as a civilian, i want to convey my thanks to all of you and your families, because without you, there would be no united states of america. and it has been my honor to tell as many of the stories as i possibly can of yours. my only regret is that i can't tell more of them. thank you brenda bring me today. and sempre fi. [applause]

if you have a question please raise your hand. questions, comments? don't everybody speak up at once. here is one. >> eric walters, intelligence officer. is there a possibility in your research that you gained an impression that the insurgents lost really before the first shot was fired, or was there any way for them to put in a better

accounting against us than they did? >> that is a good question. i don't think the insurgents lost before the first shot was fired. i think any of the commanders ran, so what fallujah did is we placed them on the run. set them back on their heels and then it took many many more years to defeat the insurgency. i think that with the amount of planning, but the amount of overwhelming military force, the conclusion was that we were going to win. but, from day one they lost. yes, they could have done other things to make it much more difficult for us. i don't think they could've ever could have ever wanted they could have inflicted more casualties and made it more

difficult. initially, they thought they could beat us. they thought they could turn us away on an attack. until those tanks started rolling down the street. rpg's started bouncing off them and stuff. than the smart one, the stupid ones died very quickly or surrendered. the smart ones -- what i say in the book is that 2-2 and 2-7 float in a city like a ship on the ocean in the enemy just went around in back of them and they went to ground. if they would have anticipated our penetration with heavy weapons and made plans, solid plans, to fight and insurgent fight from inside the buildings in our rear, they could have

inflicted more casualties. but could they have ever one? no. did that answer your questions? anybody else? >> just curious how well organized you think the insurgents were as far as tactics were concerned or where they just a bunch of folks that were kind of hiding and popping out or did they have any kind of organization to their fight against us? >> one of the things that work to our advantage is there wasn't more -- they were more organized. they were a hodgepodge group of criminals, thugs, foreign fighters, insurgents, maybe even possibly some paramilitary units from iraq's old army and they were loosely confederated. that made it easy for us, because they didn't have a central command structure.

they didn't have an overall plan to work in concert with one another. they were tens and 20s of troops working on their own in isolated pockets. i think that work to our advantage. if they were more organized it would have been would have been a much tougher fight. >> colonel rebel. you mentioned earlier on some of the reporters had lost interest and essentially gone away. what impact if any do you think that may have had on friendly and/or the information operations? >> it actually helped our information operations, because now we weren't under the scrutiny of the world media.

the marines and soldiers were free to go and clear the houses and do what they needed to do to root out those final jackals as i call them in the book. you know the overall question of the media involvement with military operations is something that we can talk about for a long, long time. and i believe it is to our benefit to have media embeds within our operation, as long as they are out there to tell -- without an agenda, as long as they are out there to report what is really happening. in today's media, if it doesn't bleed or explode, and is not going to get in the headlines or on the 5:00 news. so to keep it low that i/o

threshold that that is good the media wasn't there but then if you look at it on the other side of the coin the fact that the american and world media wasn't there during vigilant resolve enabled the enemy to tell whatever story they wanted to, and that is one of the reasons we lost our resolve. in a gunfight at the marines are going to win any day but in the politically charged world of the spring of 2004, with no media representation during vigilant resolve, the world was out the enemy's propagandists mercy. so one-sided believe it is good that you should have the media embedded with you to tell the truth to the world and on the other side you have to stay below this, this threshold of sensationalism.

so i don't really have an answer for you on that, because you do what you think is right and what i would say is to err on the side of take the media with you. anything else? the other thing you should do is, part two of my answer, is take writers with you. because the media, they have deadlines. the media, they have agenda. you know, they have to get the most sensational story on the air and beat their competition. news media today is a business. there is nothing bad about that, but their business is to attract viewers and the way they attract

attract -- or readers. they attract viewers and they attract readers through sensationalism. whereas writers, the journalist, they write the first draft of history and people like me, we write the final draft of history. take writers with you. your story won't get told quite as quickly, but in my case at least, it it will get told a lot more accurately. yes, can you wait for the microphone please? >> you talked about will bid about how you did your research and some of the trials he went through for hospital and rubio story. what was perhaps the most difficult thing to research and is there something the marine corps could do better to help storytellers like you tell that

story? >> that is a great question. the largest difficulty i had was getting official documents from the marine corps. >> we have that problem too. >> and this is not, this is not a criticism. and i don't think there is a way to solve it. what happens is, you all right after action reports and because of the nature of what you do, most of those reports end up being initially classified. now, we are all very busy. you are all very busy. fighting a continuing war and our budgets and our military are limited to directing and giving you guys the proper resources.

there is not a whole lot of budget for archiving of these materials. but the materials are archived. the marine corps does a great job of that in their archives at quantico. unfortunately, what they do is they bring that data in and a catalogue it and they throw it in the fault. it is classified. while the only way it can be unclassified is by the author, and how many of you guys ever gone back and declassified anything? you just don't have the time or the inclination. so, when i get to get material from the archives, they said well he can't give it to you because it is classified and the only way that we can show it to you is if the author goes through it again and tells us it is okay that it is no longer classified. so, i don't know how to solve that problem but that was my greatest difficulty. i must say that i've had the

utmost of cooperation from everyone that i have tried to speak with. there were a couple of soldiers and marines who have declined to talk with me over the years and i respect that. a lot of people just don't want to talk about what they have done. for many reasons. it is too horrible to talk about in the don't want to act like a braggart. there are a lot of different reasons, but i've had two people that have said no, i would prefer not to talk to you. and i respect that, but everyone else has been more than helpful in providing me with the information i need to write your story. no real difficulties other than what i just mentioned. anyone else? well, thank you again for coming. i really appreciate it and thank you for inviting me.

it is nice to be back in our fault. i went to school here when i was in the navy, and many many many years ago. thanks. [applause] richard lowry is the author of "the gulf war chronicles" and "marines in the garden of eden." for more information, visit richardslowry.com. >> we are here at the national press club talking with jules witcover about his new book, joe biden. can you tell us what things you discovered about the vice president that weren't previously known? >> well there is a lot that is known about joe biden because he is the joe biden that you see is the joe biden who is there.

he is a very open person and everybody knows. he is often accused of talking too much and is being gazprom because he talks too much but that is the man, that is the way he is. one of the things that is not known is that beyond those servers impressions of him, he is extremely intelligent man, extremely well read, and a very good politician. i think the ridicule that he has faced over his career has been very unfortunate because it doesn't really reflect the substance of the man. >> did he provide you access to do the book? did you actually have access to mr. biden directly to do the book? >> i had a three and a half hour interview with him but i also had great access to other members of his family. i interviewed 120 people here in washington and the