i have four hours and 38 minutes left of being 38. [applause] happy birthday to you. [singing] [applause] >> thank you very much.

[laughter] like this wasn't embarrassing enough already. i have never written a book before. and i adopt think i'm ever going to write one again. [laughter] but the what that means for tonight is that i don't know how to do this. i don't know who knows how to do this. is there a normal thing to do? i don't know. what i'm planning on doing is reading a short thing, actually, that karen was talking about. and then just briefly telling you about what the book is about and i will happy my take your questions and at the end of the night, i will sign books. are there any objections? hearing none. and i will say two things as a matter of preface, one is -- it's really nice you guys will come out to see me. you may know me from tv, i'm guessing most of you do. but whether or whether or not

you know from tv you know it's about the military and the war makes in saturday. that's -- that's not the saturday typical thing. this is not like candy. this that can be more fun sometimes. this just the fact that you're here and you would consider reading it and you're here to hear me talk about it is heartening to me. you hear over and over again they read the easy stuff. is is no easy stuff. thank you for being here. before you leaf you should probably meet somebody here you don't already know. because if you all like me and you want to come out on a saturday night and talking about the military. you probably like each other. if there are people here you don't know, i don't mean to set you up on dates but i'm just saying, this is probably a good place to make new friends.

we'll do a peace be with you thing at the end of the homily. it is not a particularly large or reg l bird. it looks like when you bred a common fez ant with a os trach. or make it's like a fez ant on steroids with a stretched neck and sprinters legs. but the little fellow has recently provided crucial assistance in making america's war in afghanistan and the spill over in pakistan the longest running military show in the nation's history. in may 2011 pac got the nose out of joint when they sprung a surprise come pod and offed the most infamous on the planet without giving a heads up to the government. the pakistani military having itself how to explain how the

target bin laden. in a neighborhood crawling with retired and current military offices. was pakistani intelligence that incompetent or were that they protecting bad in and then they had to explain how u.s. strike force in the large 4e8 continuers could ply in and leave the country with car cans in tow without being detected let alone stopped. president obama and the rest of america took a victory lap. the pakistanis found the entire episode hugely shaming. not so much on the bad in the backyard count. they focused on the lack of respect accorded their own nation by the states. quote, americans troops coming across the border and takes actions in one of the town is not acceptable to the people of pakistan. said the former president. its a violation of our

sovereignty. the pakistani parliament called the military into a rare and marathon closed session. where the general did have a spot of trouble in covering their respect but that did deflect much of the civilian. the united states, they reminded everyone was the real bad guy here. the generals have little trouble encouraging parliament to demand the united states would ensure that national interests were fully respected ally the pakistani people deserved some respect top to add some bite. they suggested a good first step would be foresting the u.s. to shut down the secret plan the cia had been running out of an air base. unfrntdly in -- the cia leaf that air base the generals also revealed two surprise the pakistani legislators that the cia had

been using that air base. [laughter] this is a cause for an uproar in parliament. the fact that the cia armed drones out of the air field came as a surprise to the citizens of the areas those drones were targeting tribal regions. the cia dumpy looking high-tech unmanned aircraft had been used mainly for the surveillance in the early stages in the war. they could be hell fire missiles. occasionally from 2004 to 2007 and more frequently in 2008. the bush administration had used them to launch aborn tacks on suspected terrorists in pakistan. when the obama administration took over in 2009 the number of drone attacks spiked. the next year 2009 more than doubled. the obama administration refused a a matter of policy to officially acknowledge the cia's drone attacks but in the days following a big debt, they announced that some key al qaeda

leader was killed as if the event were an active prodense or a rainbow an remarkable atmospheric happening. it become the recap brags of america's global war on terror. the obama administration had no intentions of pulling up stakes in shame see quote that base is either vacated nor being vacated was the anonymous but official word from word from washington. it was a mexico standoff. provided a little wiggle room in what was otherwise sort of a naughty situation. knotty situation. you forget about only -- when you're reading out loud. that's weird. anyway. [laughter] this tiny forgotten strip of

land that held the land it did not belong to pakistan. it had been signed over to the united arab twenty years in a sign of friendship between the two countries. aside from being full of spectacular garden of eyeden natural wonders. it is one of the most beautiful places on earth. aside from that, it is among the few winter of the area. and it is a bird held in highest steam upon hunters from the unite arab in saudi arabia. falcon i are is the sport of have been long the preferred prey for falcon. the royalty, or really pleased to have the special foothold bliewch stan --

the writer for the new yorker back around the time they built the. it is the fastest bird on easer. and and it is fast both on the ground and in the air. it also is a clever weary bird with a number of tricks. among these,s this this is my single favorite part of the book. it's really gross. hay manages the strikes the chief is an ability to ink jet a dark green slime violently from the vent. you know what that is on the bird, right? [laughter] to i think jet a dark green slim from the vent. it is the so strong it can spread for three feet and it can transform blind the falcon or

glue the feathers together making it unable to fly. [applause] you don't have to buy the book, that's the best thing in it. the brief also persisted that the meat of the houbara bustaz was an aphrodisiac. it was nearly extincts. the doctorings of difficult why the -- in made it problematic -- as happen war in was. so emerged as the destination spot for latter day arab anymore rods. the past twenty years or the princes and the more general run of arab dignitaries had jockeys for the best a lotments on the last good place on earth to hump

the poor bust around. it bestow that was held by the saudis with oil supplies from pakistan and more for flood relief in retaliation. arab world is a variation stripes show up every year with pop up tent cities, hundreds of servants within salt lie dishes for better communication and laptops and bust around seeking radar. maybe not sporting but certainly effective. it slightly crooked their striel in the hunting department. in the weeks after 9/11 attacks in 2001, when want everyoned to pitch in. they had agreed with the consent of pakistani president to let the americans use shem see as a base to supply use troops fighting the taliban in was a. and also within maybe for a few

special class fied operations. in the teb years that followed, as the cia and many private contractors began operating leather attracts out of the remote secret base remained off limits to the pakistan's own air force. when the bleep hit the fan, when the slime hit the falcon, in the aftermath of the bad raid thanks to the bust tarred, everybody had an out. united states could make it plain to the cia was not vacating. and pakistan could save face. they could stay and they did, hey, we checked our land records, it turns out the land is not legally speaking pakistan control the territory afterall. sorry, there's nothing we can do to stop the american drone war. but we do con condemn it.

the unite arab emirates said they built the airstrip. they used for the recreational purposes. what recreation the cia was pursuing there, the em ratties couldn't say. they assured the world, was never operating or controlled by the unite arab emirates response we had the drone base in shem see and no skittish ally had taken the blame for handing it over to us. [applause] so that's a little bit of how the book goes. that is the best part. i like the part about the slime section. i think that is the best. i am not an expert on the military, i'm not an expert on

war. my gig is politics that's what i pursued as an activist and what i study z and what i talk about on television. this book is a book about politics. it is about the politics of going war and the politics of not going to war and the politics of ending wars that we are in. the cons consonation over the vietnam effort lead to an multieffort. the congress passed a war powers act which reasserted that presidents can't take into their wars. congress having sole constitutional authority to declare war means they have to not be told, but asked about war congress' body that gets to decide. congress signed war powers also after vietnam got up on the hind legs, as i say, and excerted simply a more muscular attitude

toward matters of national security. joe wanted to reengage with vietnam after we left in a way that many members of congress believed we could get it started into that war again. congress stopped him from doing it. he was set on doing it. he thought was the right thing to do. congress said no. democrats and republicans alike. when the congress had a serious confrontation over it. one that or i fied gerald ford he thought that congress was overstepping the bounds. it they so part to for a to use the appropriations process. they would stop him from what he wanted to do. the powers of if the sei were confronted even if weren't changed. it is a balance and that was a time when congress -- but maybe i think the most interesting change that vietnam brought us that doesn't get much attention in civilian life. we don't feel it's our business, really. was the aib ram dock rain.

he was head as of the army as the vietnam war was winding down. he died shortly after the end of the warp. he worked on something called the total force policy. and the idea was that the military would be restructured so we couldn't go to war in big ways without disrupting civilian life. specifically, without calling up the gashed and reserves. when lbg are j was trying to make a decision, he knew that he didn't want to make the argument to the country about why that was smart to do. he had been making the arguments a a politician for years that-not smart to escalade in vietnam. he would talk about not ep sending american boys thousands around the miles -- what asian boys should be doing. he was in in favor for it. yet he felt like he had to do. lbj's solution was expand the draft. nobody will notice that. [laughter] we had a draft constantly at

that point in our country for decades. bless you. [laughter] but the -- what he avoid, what he didn't do because he didn't want to upset the country. he didn't call up the guard and reserves. he thought there's these people who have well connected who are in the guard and reserves. i don't want to call them up if i have to hear from the well-connected constituents about the war that i don't defend. we'll do the draft and that'll keep it quiet. not very much guards men and reservist ended up serves. draft was used to expand the number of people we had there instead. when he got ahold of the idea of restructuring the military. he said guard and resist have to do. we are going to operationally structure the army so that you can't have a big military operation of any kind without having guardsmen and reservists there so civilian wouldn't be

disrupted by the fact we are in war. there would not be a divide between civilian life and military life that controlled the country. i think emotionally, politically, and can that is rightically at the end of vietnam. i think that was important to the politics much of war. it would keep the country focused on and feeling the sacrifice war. rouged region changed ma. he started a war without congress barely knowing about what. with when he -- just breaking the law. when he got caught in the administration was trying to save his presidency, they invented a brand new radically expanded docket rain of presidential power that a president alone can direct any war-related action anywhere on earth even in direct con try base even by a law pass bier congress.

bizarre idea, which i think was cooked up on the spot to save his butt at the end. that became the basis of the political life of a obscure wyoming congressman named dick cheney. and that became unexpectedly important years later when congress' previous must larty on issues of war and not war actually went lobby. and then dick cheney, as white house chief of staff and later as defense secretary came up with something that was secure to the alabama rams docket rip. instead of managing sure that the manpower needs engaged whole country, he restructured the thing that so that the needs of the milling tear would be met as quietly as possible. with as little civilian upset as possible. had would be met in part for profit privately. the clinton guard administration

was delighted to embrace and expand on the project. it made easier for them. when they needed to get around the political con straints to use force in the falcons. and so this the book is not about the merits any individual war. the congress waxes and wanes in the interest in con training and oversees directors of war. the constitution puts them in charge of it. the president's expanded powers treat the military as one man's pernlg arm any has grown. it -- from civilian life. the national security budget keeps growing and becoming more and more inpenetrable. more and more gets declare secret. the wars get longer and long. and our sense that something is wrong gets deeper. i feel both for the guy whose is

putting the ma yellow ribbon on the suv and the person next to thing cursing that. i feel for both of things. i think they come from the same place. they come from a sense that we are a country that has not gone to war. we sent a military to war and they went without us. and i think that people feel that on the left and right. i think people who feel that who have no brings at all. we barely noticed when the iraq war ended. after eight and a half years more than 4,000 americans killed. even if you care about the americans and not the iraqis. after all of that time when did it end? december. it was a shrug. st. louis threw a parade but new york didn't. these are changes that happened over a short period of time i don't not think there was a

spears theory although i love them. i think we had a series of understandable decisions made by people looking at short-term political necessity. i see something we ought to do nor national security purposes want price tag is too high for people. let's tell them it's free and hope they don't notice when the grabbed kids have to pay for it. i want to defloi a large number of americans but i don't want to talk about how many i'm deploying. let's have some of them working for private companies. we don't have to answer for what we're paying them and what the lines much accountability if they do something wrong or die or get hurt. nobody will know. i think i want to do something for national security but the congress has passed a law against it. i'm going it assert that i'm above that law. i'd like to wage a war in i don't know say pakistan. but i don't want to get around the political con straints that are between me and that.

so i will wage that in secret and not answer when asked about that. i don't think all of those decisions all at once. i think they happened over a short period of time. i think it was all about trying to get around the annoying con strainting keep us from waning wars we wanted to wage. and keeping us from using the militaries in ways we want to use. the annoying con straints are some of the best things we inherited from the forefathers. those annoying con straints are there for a reason. the institution is structured to put 535 members of congress in charge of declaring war. they squabble about something that important is due to be loud and take a long time. it will engage us all. that was the point if it was meant to be easy they would have given it to the president and they did not. they talked about it at the time. we can read their letters about it. so again, this is not about the merits of any one war.

i think we have cut away from the mooring that we got from the constitution to make us not too war loved as a country. not to making us a pacifist country. i'm not. i know, that a i lot of respect for pass schism for life and the way of life. it's not my point of view. i believe wars are necessary. i want to us to have an excellent military. i do believe that the constitution structured us to be a deliberately civil nation. where peacetime is the default and war is the operation. and that's been flipped. [applause] and it turns out the buster that slimes falcons and makes the feathers stick together. if you leave nuclear weapons around for too long they grow

fungus. you know, i enjoyed writing this. i hate writing and i liked writing this. it came out the way i meant it to. i hope yolk consider reading it. i'd love to have a national fight about the stuff. i think it can be fixed. thank you. [applause] thank you so much. okay. we didn't rehearse this. we're not sure where we're standing. okay. we have time for a few questions and as i said previously. we're going do start up in the balcony and there's someone standing and ready to go. go ahead and ask your -- [whistling]

>> the question about the par rad for the vets in st. louis. i was wondering if you've seen any movement towards having a new york parade, and if you think there's any justifies for not having that par rad until all the vets come home. >> excellent question. i totally think there are two sides to the debate. i tonight think that -- i don't think that i tend to think that we ought to do it. mark the end of the iraq war in a way that would let civilians say thank you to veterans. welcome them home, and acknowledge that thing they did has been concluded. the pentagon planned on it. [applause] it's unable. their line on is the listen, the afghanistan wars are separate political entities but the same people have been fighting both of these wars. we have 90,000 americans deployed right now in afghanistan. and so welcome them home from

iraq is essentially welcoming them home from a political entity which a lot of them are not home. i absolutely. i have have a lot of respect for that viewpoint. a lot of people who i know care about the issue as much as i do. adopt that as their position. i talked to a lot of veterans who say, you know what? i've been in both places. i've been deployed in both place finance i were in afghanistan right now knowing there's been a parade to mark the end of the iraq war would be psyched to be able to think about coming home to do that for me when i'm home for afghanistan too. i don't think is an issue where you're wrong with f you're on the one side or right on the other. i wouldn't love to debate it. i think it's weird that the pentagon wants there to be -- they support there being parades in every other city in the country but not in new york. the christine, who is the head of city council in new york. they want to do a afghanistan

and iraq veterans support the idea. they don't get the last word. i think it's an open question. thank you. >> we have a question in the second balcony. >> this one. >> yes. >> okay. rachael, i really enjoyed your book. one of the premiseses of your book is the demise of the soldier after vietnam. and you discuss several reasons in vietnam for that. but one you don't discuss is the fact that a significant portion of those civilian soldiers in vietnam revoted. against the army. killed their soldiers. we killed their offices when they resist it. this scared the army. every since the incident they have eliminated the sieve began soldiers. they turned themselves into a professional army. could you comment on that. and why it was never mentioned

in the book. >> sure. i think that is -- it's implicit when you talk to the military right now about this left and right cum nation. a lot of people said to me about the book, since it's come out but i think people whatever they talk about this talk about how we need to bring back the draft so people are connected civilians are connected to the threat of military service. so everybody has skin in the game. and the reason that usually gets shut down doesn't get much further. the military said absolutely no they have no interest in there being a draft. they don't want to be in an environment whether a training environment or combat environment with people who don't want to be there. the last time it was true was in vietnam. ultimately i think the civilian soldier idea is broader than just the draft broader than just

con -- we are not a country that maintains a massive standing military force that we are looking to use all the time. that's something that the founding fathers debated. we decided something different than what we ended up with. citizens soldier idea is we have a peaceable economy and a peaceable country that is dislocated temporarily for going to war and it goes back to normalcy. it's a a good question. >> down here. >> we have a question dealers down here. so i will confess. i'm a big nerd. i had your book overnighted to. and read it in advance of tonight. >> thank you. >> i know. >> did you agree that the bird part was the best part. >> the green slime. i grew up 30 miles from the air force base. that struck home. what struck me as interesting most interesting about the book you talk a lot about the

executive branch, you talk about the legislative branch and there's not a lot about the judiciary. and we've over the past, you know, witnessed the role of the jo dash area in determining what is and what is not constitutional and one of the premiseses of the book is that the executive has overstepped the constitutional authority to declare war. i'm wondering why you don't think there's been any role in the judiciary in this. >> totally good question. and it is because the judiciary has deferred to congress. because they looks at the division of powers in the constitution, and says, we yeah we know this isn't us. we know it's not you. it's you guys. you supposed to use your equal power as congress to weigh in here and take the power back. you see -- one point of the book, there's the forgotten the history now. it's weird, it's not that long ago. members of congress sued in court, the federal court.

it was to staff george bush. george h. wfmght bush. you want to scream into the book. it's not supposed to be you alone. [laughter] >> members of congress were yefling at him and actually decided to seek federal court injunction to stop the war. >> right. >> which is crazy idea. and the ruling from the judge in the case is a beautiful thing. it is really beautifully articulates. could have essentially plagiarized it and made that a piece of the book. at the end of it, and it says and having concluded you right and the president is doing stuff he's not supposed to be doing. these are congress' powers. dude. i as a judge can't stop him from

doing anything. you as congress have the power to stop him but it can't just be this dozen mens of congress however many people it was suing to do it. you have to take action as congress. which means you have to act by majority vote within your self as an institution from doing this thing. do your job. it's a bucket of cold water. but that's it's true that, you know, you don't expect any president. no matter, i mean, you would reincarnate jesus and make him president. aside from jesus, i don't expect that any president would give back power that the executive branch had accrued the precedent of the previous actions. nobody gives away power. if you have president you think you have the country's best interest at heart and you are sometime mid for people in

politics. you're not going to give away power if you believe you are doing what's right. presidents don't give power away. it's like an agent rubber band that stretches in one direction. congress has to take that power back. and congress has to do it on their own behalf. and we don't have much faith in congress to do anything right now to do that big seems high in the sky. i think that's what needs to happen. thank you. [applause] first of all -- hello. i'm really tall. sorry. i'm here. i'm right here. can you hear me? thank you for coming out tonight. my question has to do with the nature of the war you're talking about in the book. a lot about more formal wars or decklation of wars. what does the role of arab war in counter terrorism have to do with the military functioning.

whether that -- was a legal or reinterpretation of wartime powers. what does it have to do from the military. >> excellent question, very hard to answer. i think that basically -- i think there had is reasonable wriggle room in terms of the way we are set up as at country as the president's commander in chief powers to do some things in an almost unilateral or temporary unit lal really a way when speed is of the essence. the way the founders talk about it was do things like repel invasion flps are things where the president is given authority to act as a military commander outside what we think as the constitutional prerogatives of war makings. sister limited. very limited powers. and to the extend that we're making right now is about transnational groups that don't

have governments that speak for them and don't have borders that they respect. i think those two things have worked together to radically expand the amount of military power we use without any deference to congress. for example, we do a lot of military -- a lot of our military work through the cia. and the cia is essentially functioning as another branch of the military. but they are one that has deniability, i guess, they think, in terms whether we explain or own up to their actions. i can see why somebody who wants the power to act in the nation's national security interest wants the flexibility to be able to act anywhere in the world never explain it, and cover it up if necessary. i just adopt think that's america. i can understand why somebody wants that power. we are not designed to give anybody that power president at

least in a sustained way. i think it's putting pressure on all the weak points where we're already drifting anyway. >> thank you. >> up in the balcony. top balcony. >> good evening. thank you so much for being here with us tonight. my question is as of the war in vietnam, the very clear period of reflection and questioning both on the part of americans and politicians as to what are the lessons we learned from this war. and my question is, do you think that a similar period of reflection and questioning will have come about in the aftermath of afghanistan and iraq or are we too removed as a nation from our military actions for that to happen. >> that is the big $6 4,000 question. i was on the daily show this week.

that was john's question. he said i see all these things you are praising after vietnam happened after the national uphelve of vietnam. do we need something that big again in order to assert, for example, congress' power over the things in order make the kinds of changes that you say. and i think it's arguable. i mean, to have fought not only the longest war in american history, but alongside that, have fought another eight and a half yearlong in iraq con current with the longest war in american history and to have 1% of the population fighting the war. and for them to be completely unpaid for and for the civilian to be granted tax cuts. when you put it together, i think you approaching unsustainable crisis. just in terms of how we think of ourselves as a country.

[applause] i am a big believer in protest movements. i think that the reason there were so many changes after nam is because people were in the streets. [applause] i don't foresee that happening on this issue now because we are innetter to the fact these wars are happening. we don't notice when iraq ends. i don't foresee that kind of mass social miewmplet. but we also have a situation where there's no partisan affiliation how people feel about the things. how they feel about the afghanistan war is disassociated from the party position at this point. that's almost every controversial issue in american politics is by party or at least by liberal and conservative aid logical lines not this. so no we don't have a mass

social movement pushing for this. if anybody does push on these issues i think they are pushing on an open door. i don't there's going to be as much resistance. to me it feels fixable. i feel like the crisis is we are in is big enough. it's disgust rather than with the national protest movement. it's going to remain to be seen. i hope the book can be part of naming the problems so we can fix it. >> thank you. >> middle balcony. [applause] >> hi, your show and the was in on your show, the stories that you tell, and your book are so well researched. i'm kind of curious how you ensure that the facts are facts. >> through long, long hours. and cross referencing. i mean, i don't know we get stuff wrongs. one of the thing i find weird

about tv, there is not history of on of air corrections for factual misstatements. which i don't understand. it's a cause for a giant ripple of excitement whatever we do a correction on the air. if we get something wrong, i try to correct it. for the record, i call john deductioner a machine in the he's a navy admiral. i'm sorry. mistakes happen. there are things that get screwed up. it's in the academic work, you have to do everything you can do to make sure you know what you're talking about before you say anything at all. read first, talk later. you have to somebody with fresh eyes checking your work and somebody checking their work. you have to be willing to be wrong. you have to be willing to make it right when you have caught out for something wrong. especially when you catch it. it's a spectrum and a process.

there's no magic bullet. you have to work hard tat and care about it. >> thank you. >> congratulations on the award. >> thank you. >> in the interview there you were talking about how the republicans are willing to lose battles in order to win the war. and so you just said this was a door to be pushed on. do you think that's a good way for liberals to bring the discussion back to the center and perhaps move in a more progressive fashion? to open that door of conversation and what do you think are some steps that we can take to bring the country back toward the left? >> it's a good question. i don't think i know the answer it to it. the basic problem in left versus right talks is that you know this, i can tell in the prim sis of your question. my idea is that on the right, you've got the conservative movement, which is well-funded,

well organized, thinking generationally, knows where it's going and have the resources to do it. that's the republican party, which is kind of not that awesome. [laughter] i mean, -- [applause] i don't mean that republicans aren't that awesome. the republican party is not a good organization. they're not good at what they do. they're not as good as the democratic party. i don't -- if you applauding because you are a democrat and you like the compliment. okay. i don't mean democrat is bad republican is bad. republicans are bad at running a political party. they're not good at the basic stuff you need to be organized. they don't need to be. there's a conservative movement. they hook themselves into the conservative movement and they do what they're told. and if it sometimes means they

have lose elections in the short run because they are advocating against conception in 2012 the conservative movement doesn't care. about the electorial interest they have their eyes on generational change. because of that, that's why you get the phenomena on the right that you don't get in the left. democrat politics have been the same. the policy positions have not changed. skittered a little bit to the left. they haven't moved very much. republican politics, move so fast so for a to the right that they're constantly turning on each other and having to reinvent themselves. john mccain sarah palin ran on a cap and trade bail out the banks plat platform in 2008, sarah palin. right. mitt romney is has to run against not only himself as a governor, romney has to run against as the guy who ran in

2008. [applause] they are constantly outpacing themselves. that's because the conservative movement is making them whoever got the furthest right position if politics becomes the standard fore bearer. they all scoot over. when you do that all the democrats are like, standings over here. so the democrats are standing here they're fighting among others. interest groups. how must we care about you. is it okay that the senate major leader is -- i don't know i just. that's departments. and republicans are over here and they're like. looking to the right. as you do that, democrats whatever they have to compete in general election terms are constantly scooching over here to be -- that means that the center moves to the right. there are republicans to fall off that right ward edge all the

time. [laughter] but it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter to the conservative movement in the long run. they don't care about the election cycle politics. if 2012, they're going to lose all the midwest governorships they won in 2010 because they got the guys in in 2010 and have them run like they are alabama. wisconsin is not alabama. they're going to lose that. and -- [applause] that dynamic doesn't exist on the left. there's no group pulling the democratic party to the left. how do progressives pull the democratic party to the left? discuss. [laughter] okay. we're going to do three more questions. >> go ahead. >> thank you for the work that you do and the long hours to increase the amount of the useful information that we have to work with. >> thank you. >> in large part through what i've learned from your show,

i've begun to reality we have shadow army of private contractors who do fight in our name. it's not under our honor, per se, and i'm wondering who has the leverage to dial down those forces when that becomes, you know, i think before it comes a point of crisis. >> this is one of these things that i think is do able. and you will hear in washington that it's completely undoable. remember back in the democratic primary, senator clinton and senator obama were very outspoken against the use of contractors for what used to be military purposes. they both said they were dial them back. there was no reason we needed to use contractors for things that the military used to do for themselves. it was not saving our money. it was costing us in terms of our accountability in the world. it was cause problems. they were doing bad things that the soldiers had to answer for in a way that wasn't safe for

the military. they said all the right things. now as secretary of state they have a huge number of contracts. and as president the contractor issue hasn't gotten any better. what they say in washington are the contractors are too -- what we do. we killed all the contractors got rid of all the contracts in the short term. we couldn't do anything tomorrow. maybe it peoples that way. i'm sure the contractors made themselves seem indies penceble. but the -- the reason i write about it a lot and some of the disturbing details about what happened in the book. is to remind everybody that it hasn't been that long that we have had halliburton peeling potatoes. there's always been some involvement of private businesses in war making. but the outsources of just the

basic logistics of being at war. things like laundry, food, building barracks, driving convoys, vip security. that is purely military function really not that long ago. if it could be created in twenty years, it can be gotten rid of top we can go back to the way it was where it came from was a funny story. i think it's chapter four. [laughter] thank you. it could be done and it takes role. there have been some things where there's been interesting across the aisle on it. claire is a relatively conservative progressive on others. she is -- if she gets re-elected in missouri i expect her to be the one that hold the banner highest. >> thanks. >> on the balcony. >> good evening. i've been watching your show since the 2008 season.

it's an honor to see you speak in person. >> thank you. >> my question relates to the u.s. involvement in the recent crisis in libya where the u.s. working with nato and the libyan rebels themselves without laying a single u.s. boot open the ground. do you see this kind of involvement focusing on less manpower and as a viable kind of path forward for the united states in alternatives to long costly wars like afghanistan and iraq? >> there is no matter of doctrine. there's a really smart guy national security reporter the, the guy who i think is like my buddy. like my punk rocker. he writes for wire.com. i didn't interview with him about the book.

which was super harsh on the book. it was confrontational. what i expected. what i'm surprised by there's no doctrine of how we should get out of war. and boy howdy, am i not qualified to do that. to be that. i think that it is worth really in a nonpartisan way engaging with what is essentially barack obama waging war on the world. he is a multilat resist for some things. he is happy to wage secret war in a greatly expanded way all over the world in a a way he doesn't have to answer for. that's the secret. that's the beauty of it. when it comes to intervention that are not secret, that are overt. he is a multilateralist. that was tip fied by what happens in libya. and that is a form of american

-- that's a form of excerting american power. using the fact that we have a military that we spend as much on as the rest of the world military combined. to foster international cooperation on national security matters. we would not have gone to libya had the arab league saying that. with the arab league in a different situation on syria. that's part of the reason they've taken a different approach to syria. you are constrain id by the fact you are checking in with everybody else. you can in a sense, intervene less on the on the other hand maybe you can intervene more. if you have international coalition everything looksly get. it's more george bush than it is any other modern president. i think that's obama's way. i don't know to weigh in whether it's right or wrong. it's a different approach than what mitt romney is offering. >> thank you. >> in the middle, go ahead.

>> first of all, i'd like to thank you for everything do you. i think if there were more ramp l mad doughs the country would be better off. [applause] that's very nice for you to say. very generous. [laughter] >> and secondly, i've got a quick comment and a question. >> just keep it to the question. we need to end in a few minutes. >> brief question. i'd like to say i was drafted in 1968. i found it a extremely valuable thing to happen in my life i also found that my family and friends became extremely interested in the outcome of the vietnam war the day i was drafted. the question i have is, money is behind the war.

and i want you, please, to say something about the corp. rossive influence of money in the campaigns. president obama needs $1 billion for the re-election. what's wrong with this picture? thank you. >> thank you. [applause] and this year do we feel any differently about the idea that for many hundreds of billions of dollars that are going to be spent that some hundred of those billions are spent to money that we can trace to nowhere. on the front page of the newspaper is the likely nominee on the republican side. the super pac that is supporting him is distinguished by a fact that a lot of the nations to the pac are listed as options as corporate shells.

even when people are forced by the few elections rules we have left to disclose something about where a duonation comes from. if you put it through a corporate shell, there's no trace back to a human. i always wonder if there's no way to trace it back to country. if china had a preference between barack obama and romney do we think they wouldn't figure out a way to -- i don't know. that would be against the rules, they say. [laughter] yeah. the fec was in charge of enforcing the implements every american road would be an auto ban. the corp.s corp. rossive -- we with gone through in four or fiver supreme court decisions that have gutted what was remained of american election law. we have now in a wild west

period where not only are we looking at mistiers you funders on a massive scale lake we have never seen before. one person could write a $1 billion check. and to fund somebody's campaign. right. we're amazed by fact that barack obama needs to raise billion dollars and on the other side. what about the fact that somebody wanted this year's steve forbes or this year's i don't know eric prince or somebody to be competitive. why not find one of america's billionaires and one of these guys is worth $7 billion ored. it's a three-way race but purely by one billionaire's interest. we worried about it like this. so i think that we are in a position right now that's a very

hard environment for political reform. because these corp. rueings here came through supreme court decisions and you don't repeal them. what you're talking about in order to fix this, i think, and i don't say this lightly is probably an amendment to the american constitution. and that's a big undertaking. [applause] so, you know, i think we are a long way off from fixing it. as they continue to strike down state efforts at the state level it's going to be hard to set a example an the country. it's the thing that worries me the most in all of politics. [applause] okay. >> we'll take a few more. we keep adding questions. two more brief, brief questions. your other questions? >> okay. go ahead. >> hi. to what extent has the u.s. government changed the concept of what substitutes a threat.

you go further back on the book on global war on terrorism. in announcing this the bush administration effectively waged war on a type of war. on a tactic propagate by the scattered covert enemy. to what extent has the unmooring of the sustained military threat actually further enable the the unmooring of the military itself. >> i see it more as a symptom than a cause, i think. what laws i should say. pfs the war on terrorism and it became the war on terror. so we from it being a tactic, to being a war on a bad feeling. [laughter] can you get any -- war on id. that vagueness of the what we were having a war on should be -- and i think it was a sign there was something wrong. i think people are creeped out that a we have a homeland

security. since when does america have a homeland. we don't think of ourselves like that. seems like war on exterior seems like a vague things. when you don't have to win the arguments, your argument can suck. ..