i was born without it. and maybe all of the guys i worked with were kind of the same in that you try to keep yourself safe. you don't want to get shot, you're not looking to get killed, it's just you're willing to put yourself there for reasons that aren't necessarily clear until, until you're there. so the questions that you asked about what about putting yourself in a position where somebody else decides if you live or die, whatever. those are good questions that i never asked myself, not even remotely. >> and i will echo that. [laughter] the amazing thing is, you know, we don't -- military actually doesn't make wars. you know? we go where you send us, and that's why you have us. we hope that there's nobility in the mission, that somehow we are justified. and when we are found not to be and the movement for ten years still doesn't have -- i don't think anyone thinks that iraq

was the right decision to make now or a year after we were there. but we stayed there for ten years. >> i think vice president cheney and secretary rumsfeld probably still think it's -- [laughter] >> well, for some people it was a good idea. >> paul wolfowitz. >> the truth being i voted and i went to iraq, you know? and there i was. and it no longer, like i said, we were kind of, we were kind of above politics in our, in our hopefulness and below politics in our utility. we weren't actively a part of the mechanism in a way which felt like, you know, this -- we have a hand in our fate. and so when i was there, i went back in 2005 to ramadi. by that point we knew we were wrong. but my marine were being sent. and to not, to not go was

intolerable to me. and upon returning from that tour, of course, is when everything went wonderfully in terms of seeing my child but terribly in losing my parents and losing friends throughout that entire tour, that was the tour i was wounded, i left cold at 16 years. you get money after being there for 20 like for life. but i walked. because i knew that that sense of responsibility was inescapable. i would never be able to not watch a television, see marines go in, and if i were capable, if i were still able, to justify not going with them despite the fact that i had every reason in the world to justify not going with them. you know? i had a wife and a child and no one to help them in my ab especially. -- absence. but the danger is you begin to feel like you are somehow important to it.

that somehow your abilities, scarce as they are, make you usefullingful and that to turn y that part of your life is to betray a great, a great expectation. even though the ma reens don't -- marines don't care. one colonel in, one colonel out. it's great. the machine always repairs itself. it has a lot of platelets. but you have to imagine for a moment that you are unique, that now you bring -- that somehow you bring something to that leadership position or to that capability you have whether you're a lance corporal, sniper, whatever you are, that somehow you've perfected something which is necessary in that machine n that organization. and what you realize in war and what i realize, of course, and what the book addresses is that death is just random. they just pick you. you know?

on the day that i read about -- they just picked his vehicle, not mine. it wasn't because my vehicle was scary. it's because they picked his, and now he's dead. and now his family is without a father, and they'll never have that. not like that. not the same. i saw him die. i saw him leave. i saw the family destroyed. but they didn't. that's my part of his, his disappearance. and my whole book, really, is my absolute abhorrence of disappearance, you know? i want to preserve. i want to save. if it's memories, fine, then memory. if it's stone, then fine, you know? it's why i became a stone mason when i was very young. it took me all these years to look back and realize why? why was i working in stone? war was the same thing and the great betrayer, because, of course, you could see that it

doesn't matter. all that train, all those skills you have, it could just be that day, and it's you. um, so a long answer for how in some ways even the fate we choose we don't have a hand in. >> thank you. thank you very much. [applause] >> coming up on c-span2, the cato institute on booktv with

defense secretary chuck hagel. experiences are discussed about a combat hospital. and military leaders then talk with navy snipers on their careers. >> we must take back media. the media is most powerful institution on earth. more powerful than any bond or missile. it is an idea that explodes onto the scene. we need to be able to hear people speaking for themselves. outside the box. we cannot afford the status quo anymore.

from global warming to other topics. >> amy goodman taking your calls and e-mails and tweets. three hours live at noon eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> the transportation security administration faces lawsuits over its air airport screening procedures this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> good afternoon, everybody. i am jim harper, director of information policy studies here at the cato institute. i'm so pleased to welcome you here today to talk about all of the ways that the government infringes on travel.

we only talk about the major ways that they do. so today will be to different but related issues of the government and travel. first, we will hear from edward hasbrouck. when i saw him give this presentation at the brennan center for justice a few months ago, i thought, more people need to see and understand the intimate travel surveillance that the government conducts over all of us, law abiding citizens when we try to run the country where the world. we will have a full presentation from edward hasbrouck regarding his research, which i think is very interesting and very concerning.

and then ginger mccall will talk to us about the introduction of a rulemaking with the tsa and the strip search being required by court order. the tsa took 20 months to produce two sentences of regulatory language and only some of the language was used that was proposed. we welcome you who are lucky here in the room were on c-span. the hash tag is #tsasearch. with regard to the rulemaking, there is a url that could take you to their webpage, where they accept comments on the strip search rulemaking policy. it is tsa/comments.

tiny url.com/tsa comments. so first, edward hasbrouck. at our very first meeting that i recall, during a meeting, he accosted me in the hall and was virtually holding me there. his arguments were meritorious and his demeanor was intense. businessweek called him the go to authority on international travel and an expert on airfares and how to get the best deals on the internet. he is an author and journalist and writer and consumer travel expert. he is the author of the book the practical nomad and you can find him at practical nomad.com.

edward hasbrouck new turned his efforts towards debating our freedom to travel and today i think he is one of the foremost experts on the surveillance of our i.t. systems in the travel industry. that is why wanted him to speak with us. he also works on these issues. john gilmore and founded this particular project. and he challenged me along with all of the other members of the committee to return to washington without showing id at the airport. i took him up on that challenge.

okay, so i will welcome edward hasbrouck and then we will welcome ginger mccall for the second half. [applause] >> thank you, for that kind introduction. thank you to all of you for coming here and on a further internet know, if you want to follow along at home, you can find copies of the slides that i will be showing on the identity project website at papers please.org. since september 11, 2001, the u.s. government has a comprehensive system of surveillance and control of our

movement in the country and abroad. bits and pieces have been called out from time to time. but i think there has been little understanding of the comprehensive big picture, which i will try to give you as quickly as possible today. but the first step is the id requirement of people having government credentials not so much to prevent people without government issued id from traveling, but in order to ensure that each act of travel can be logged and correlated into the second component of this process in an id linked personal travel history of your movements. on the basis of which the government has then been able to move to a permission-based control regime in which real-time decisions are made each time you want to go somewhere, as to whether the government will let you.

and on the dossier of history links to that identity. finally, once that system is in place, the government has made the final step in a presumptive right to travel which can be interfered with only on the basis of judicial action. and that they have received affirmative government higher position. so i think everything about the air force is different and not subject to any of the usual rules. making it more different than it should be to put these things into perspective. a good frame of reference for comparison is that it is part of communication. so they are recording movements. movements of messages and any

other case, measurements of the physical person. both have unfunded burdens in some ways, more than $2 billion by the dhs estimate of mandated modifications to travel and in order to support performing these government surveillance and control functions. finally, they are sufficiently dragnets and collecting information by everyone in case it could later be interested government. although travel is not generous in the way that it is said, there are significant differences. one is the legal framework in which a statute law, communications currently have more legal protection and information about that of our physical stance.

congress does not seem inclined to fix it. the bigger difference is and how the government uses this data. this is not merely an act of surveillance been an active real-time controlled system. it is a bit confusing. this will be technical. everything that i will say is an oversimplification. otherwise we would be here for days or weeks. travel i.t. is complex. dhs has confused matters by its own inconsistency of policy and language. especially over the last decade as the system has evolved. there are three different sets of overlapping data that the government has required travel companies to collect, depending on whether it is international or domestic flight with different names. secure flight, the automatic

targeting system, there is also a different thing that it isn't as significant as it looks. dhs actually makes its own reservation information. whereas for domestic travel, it is controlled. the privacy of this information, it is a meaningless thing unless they can go back to the industrial host of the data and get another copy whenever it wants. the and it really doesn't matter unless the government has read access. most of them came from these kind of background. they assumed after 9/11 it would be really easy. and it doesn't really work like that. many airlines outsource certain

things were global distribution systems, which also serves other travel companies, hotel, travel agencies, so forth and so on. there are four major and then some minor things in this business, which gives you a sense of how significant of a business it is. together it forms an outsourced global clout for reservation data on behalf of the entire industry. there are a couple of significant things, there are many intermediaries between the government. this is why the government can get this data from the travel companies without needing a warrant. so in some ways the traveler has no rights and they don't even have a way to know whether the government has gotten this data or not.

but being a global cloud makes things very vulnerable. marketers and data miners who are unknown to the traveler. criminals from hackers to terrorists and government agencies. other law enforcement and foreign government and their law enforcement agencies around the world. in europe there has been a great deal of concern that someone traveling within europe on a european airline, making reservations through a european travel agency, even when it is stored in europe, there could be multiple copies in the cloud that dhs can access without even the airline knowing about. and we say, well, what about europeans. well, even if you are traveling within the u.s., either the

airline or the travel agency can get access. and they can do that -- just as shown here. they are subject to chinese jurisdiction in line they can hand that over to the public security bureau. no record is kept of this by the reservation system. it is not visible to the airline that this has happened. and after the fact, there is no way to know whether or not it had happened. so then there was the incomplete diagram by tsa of how this process works on the government side. there are many incomplete things here. but i would like to focus on a few things.

you will notice aviation booking entities, as seen here -- one moment. >> sorry about that. okay, the upper left, this is shown as a pastor rather than a centerpiece object. it is showing as going through the airlines, and going directly into the industry. over on the right-hand side, you can see that this is more than just what tsa may describe as is watching. it is a process of evaluation. and we still have the threat and an analysis that is shown here. but nothing about how this goes

on and what decisions are made. there is a diagram that was published by tsa before the latest update. showing that they now have real-time access to other databases and whatever that they can access as well on the other side. but what made the most significant impact, this is an enlargement from another version. you will notice that there is passenger data moving from left to right. travelers, airlines, those who evaluated. you will also notice that there are arrows going from right to left. that is the permission message in those lines are those that

dhs wants to be built into the infrastructure to permit you a boarding pass so they can have an individualized preflight per passenger for the government. tsa says some have no right of travel by any specific means and not makes express statutory language. and it prevents you traveling by air, obligating them to consider this right as they never have done any rule-making up-to-date. if they are not following the law, can we get reviewed in court? well, we will talk about that one later. but it's interesting to see what the express policy of dhs has been. these statements are from the former secretary of homeland security who repeatedly said that he did not believe the

no-fly orders should be subject to judicial review, which is a remarkable statement from a former federal judge, saying that he thought his decisions should not be subject to review by the kind of person that he used to be back when he was a federal judge. while these are policies under the bush administration, no obama administration official has repudiated these views and it continues to be the practice of the dhs. not so much to defend systems that i am talking about. but to actively resist being obligated to defend them before any court at all. so what is in the records that they compile? well, if you travel across u.s. borders in the last 10 years, dhs has a file on you. with the identity project, you can find them on our website. at papers please.org. we have been compiling the

responses. eventually i sued for the portions that they withheld. they retroactively exempted the automated targeting system and the district court upheld that exemption. but they did release quite a bit of self damning information. some of the information that we know is there and have seen, and examples include passenger name records, they also include non-airline data. and the log of any time you cross the border for any reason, and more information to be given in regards to people of interest. this is a simple thing as it happens. what is interesting is the associational data and the only

contact information. the phone number of a friend that i gave one ahead of time. i was surprised to know that he had been permanently linked with me in our homeland security file. another simple reservation, here we see an ip address. and that can be correlated whatever other internet records can be associated. e-mail address, credit card number, permitting them to pull in a lot of other associational data. it is what they talk about using them for. this is deliberately the guilt by association machine. that is what it is designed for. that is how it is used. it is not limited to air travel and travel in the u.s.

on lines three and four and this reservation, it reflects a portion of the strip from a train trip. this is a trip to france. and this is from strasburg springford. this abstract is the smoking gun. it shows that dhs has root access. they have their own user ids with privileges. this prayer person traveled to berlin and stayed there for a week and then traveled on to london. stay there for a week and then came home. lines three and four are a journey entirely within europe. the rest of this shows that this was a separately issued ticket not connecting from a flight to

the u.s. on an airline that is applied to the u.s. if you call the united airlines, they would not have seen it. only those with certain privileges would. everybody that i have spoken with have gone their files and say, what does this mean, when i have gone over with them? there has been surprising things and disturbing things are defined in their file. once they see that, they don't want their file on the internet. each of these things is something that i have seen in actual examples that people have received in regards to their request. hotel reservations, if they are made. whether or not they show up is a complex question. but they sometimes do if they are made in the same reservation. multiple people are linked together with their name and

gender and date of birth and so forth. showing whether travelers asked for one bed or two. special meal requests, a special service request, the show up routinely. the nature of this operator or the demographic, there is other information that could be more revealing than what you think in these types of services. doing so is routine, for example. again, everything but the travel companies have to deal with is in the permanent files.

if you get a discount because you are part of a group that is traveling to a particular conference or event or convention, the billing code could reveal what organizations convention you were attending. normally it is very resistant to disclosing its membership list, as many are. in addition to these reservations, it says it is supposed to be published in the federal register. ..

what if cuba were to say not only a want the passenger manifest and the information they have on the sites, visit cupid government will cut them cut them in advance advocates on one of these planes unless the cuban government approved. what would we think of that? that is what the government is now depending of other countries. this is a log entry, amtrak, a trip i took a train across the u.s. canadian border in montréal and new york.

here is one for a trip by private car. more recently the cbp has installed license plate readers at the border crossing come as a more recent entry would also include the latest number of the car and is writing a. and finally there's a free as they can be associated with any entries in this blog and these are not just people arrested are it. these can be entered when nothing was found. negative for criminality wants it warrants a vehicle exam subject your citizens have somebody who walked across the border. why is this recorded in their permanent file? for what conceivable use? i flew back from -- i won't say, but i connect to it through london and had apple and some bread and said can i keep these? they said you can keep the

bread, this you have to throw it away. i threw it away and thought nothing of it. some years later i find that i am permanently this event. on another occasion i've been on agricultural industry expo in buenos aires and i checked a box which are supposed that says that an around livestock. you may not know when to shut up fox in the early biblical sense the custom border protection people, and should wash your issues with this and that. if they get off on washing my shoes, they get off on washing machines, but why does this a lot and my file? assistant john gilmore's file. he had a book entitled drugs in your rates. if this is not prohibited recording of the exercise of first amendment rights, i don't know what is.

from another trip john gilmore had taken, the passengers traveling her nine-month and then traveled around to visit her, 100% baggage exam negative. passenger self-employed, entrepreneur and computer software business. beta notch partner is a suspicious bag that blogs in your permanent file. there's more to all of this. i hope that all of you will be inspired by this to look into what is in your file, but also to look more closely at the reality of how that is used and what we need to get out of the situation reprint it into, where we now travel by common carrier, only as a privilege granted by permission of the government. thank you.

[applause] >> now you have some sense of the digital look over your getting before he at the airport. what about the examination your body gave money to get to the airport? >> you will find that ginger mccall? the intensity, but i saw the doggedness and maybe more. she teaches him some of us about the government and the georgetown law center. where can i variety of issues including consumer protection, government request to national security matters. she litigates freedom of information lawsuits and is coeditor of litigation under the federal met love 2010. she is author several priests on privacy issues the supreme court and regularly speaks on open government issues and a number of forms she stuffed so as many.

hopefully she will lead to resume the factions now spoken at cato. she is of course provided commentary to numerous outlet and journals to discuss the tsa's reason for making to the extent there is one. ginger mccall from e.p.i.c. [applause] >> thank you for having me. i'll try to give as much intensity as they can to this. jim staff was helpful enough to get my coffee before him, so hopefully that will add to it. i guess i'll start up with the good news. right now we have the unique opportunity to comment on a controversial air travel program. the body scanner program, body scanners have been sent to work down for four or five years now. we've had several lawsuits on this topic and finally come to fruition with an actual notice rulemaking. by the agency.

skeptics among you will ask what will be, isn't the agency going to do what it wants to do anyway? we believe this is an opportunity for the american public to weigh in and if the agency doesn't take comments into account, we are willing to go ahead and take this further court. this notice and comment rulemaking came out of a lawsuit they filed a july 15, 2011. this was a d.c. circuit court filed under several legal doctrines including the fourth amendment, privacy act and administrative procedure act. that acts as an agency is going to issue a new role it has to go through a comment rulemaking. and solicit the comment of the american public. it has to give you and the rest of the american public and everyone who cares the opportunity to comment and give the agency feed back into

account. with us the agency -- petition for the rulemaking multiple times and finally cover the lawsuit in court. the court actually ruled in our favor on the apa issue, which is quite unusual in result we were with. the court found the tsa is not justifies his failure to issue comments on the court said the agency practice, the body scanner machines that showed the image to this tsa officials impose a substantial burden on the public. according to the court, few if any regulatory procedures pose upon so many members of the public. millions of travelers going each day to these airports, passing through body scanner machines that were at that point coasting up graphic image for some tsa agents in a room to look at. the court expressed concern.

world against us in the fourth amendment issue based on the representation members of the public have the option to opt-out of the machine that you could opt for a patdown. when we originally started pursuing this topic, the patdown is a fairly typical patdown you would expect. however, after we started to pursue more doggedly, and the agency got frustrated and started to issue what were called enhanced patdown. some of you might be familiar with the sword of libertarian campaigns that have been in the wake of these enhanced patdown's, they don't touch my junk guy. if you're not familiar, encourage you to youtube and do research on what is included in these enhanced patdown's. this is not something e.p.i.c. would stand behind him to focus on the body scanner issue and passengers to opt-out.

that doesn't mean we think the pat downs are appropriate. nro comments to the agency, we're going to ask for different alternatives. the court orders the agency to undergo the comment rulemaking on the court said to the agency, you need to do this promptly. the agency interpreted this as a nearly two-year delay entering this. , e.p.i.c. filed multiple times with the court to encourage the court to tell the agency had needed to follow up to get the agency a 30 day deadline, some deadline by which it needed to issue, rulemaking and approximately 20 months later, here we are looking at the rulemaking after the court set a deadline for the agency to have this completed by the end of march. on march 26, no surprise to us following would be later.

i thought it would be the final friday in large at 4:30 p.m. they did it a few days early, march 26. the tsa started the same for comment rulemaking period, see the members of the public and many other organizations here, cato and others cannot comment on this. the deadline for filing his june 24. we have information on epic.org. you come up in the upper right-hand corner for the key terms tsa comment. you can use the tiny arl gym has mentioned them i encourage you to comment on this. we've taken a look at the proposed rule, which amounts to two sentences in the two sentences tsa is proposing to use who modifies procedures and here i'll read it for you. this screening inspection may

include the use of advanced imaging technology he. advanced imaging technology is defined to detect anomalies about physical contact with the individual screens. that's 20 months for it to work right there. nowhere in this desert taking to account the evasiveness that machine with the fact that your only alternative to these machines is a super invasive patdown. nowhere do they take into account the real cost to passengers who choose to opt-out and are subject to long waits. i've attempted to opt-out personally on this and ended up having to opt-in because waited for 20 minutes for a tsa officer may seem sex to the main enhanced patdown. when i decided i was going to miss my flight, i was forced to opt back in and this comports with a lot of what we heard from

travelers when we asked travelers to tell us what their experiences in comports with a lot of what a lot of open economy to freedom of information act to dh duty. we requested originally back in 2008 or 2009 several sets of documents from tsa on body scanners and part of what inspired our entire campaign against the tsa. we requested documents 60 minutes overcome the specifications for these machines as well as passenger complaints. we got back complaints that was probably about this high and also thought contracts and statements of work defined on the website. the syndicated tsa wasn't telling the truth about these devices. it wasn't telling the truth but the devices are cape. the indicated they were not designed to pick up powdered explosive, which is something i'll talk about later context of the rulemaking.

the devices were capable of capturing, storing and transferring those underline graphic naked images by the body scanner machines and there were several other interesting finding. i won't spend all of my time, but you can find the information on our website and this is part of what inspired her lawsuit about the rulemaking as we thought this was quite a large step for the agency should take without opening up to, from the public. given the text of the proposed rule, which you can define information on our website and also at the euro mentioned. these are the recommendations that they had to include and are comments that we have places where it might be great for other people to a complementary expertise to weigh in. the agency is completely taken over the dialogue on this. first he was the use of the word whole body scanners.

whole body imaging originally. tsa decided that wasn't a nice warm in busy enough term and perhaps gave the american public too much of an idea of what was going on, so they change the term to body scanners. now they've changed to an even more sanitized term, advanced technology. we would encourage you to do the same. some people have slightly more extreme version of this. we've taken to calling them nude body scanners or mbs because it's a more accurate description of what the machines are capable of. they plan to support regular alternative in the agency summarizes several alternatives. one of those is just of the things the way they are, to stick with metal detectors as we've been doing for the last

two decades, decades in the house. another alternative is to focus on metal detectors along with explosive detection technology. that is something they would endorse because it's much more narrowly tailored and only looking for a particular thing and that is the threat worries the body scanners pick up the manner of medical devices and anything extra you might have in your pocket. when we issued our freedom of information act to the agency, they are not designed to pick up the powdered explosives the key threat. we are very heavily going to come out in favor of their right to opt-out. and to demand the use of image. two others over time the issue is they did make modifications to the machine and light of public protest them.

they require privacy filters be put on the machine. or asking privacy filters be mandated and in fact congress have asked for the same thing. they mandated individuals go through the screening process and the courts have relied on the fact in the line against the fourth amendment claim that the agency has represented to them and to the public you have the ability to opt-out. in this role, let's go ahead and put that into the actual regulation of cell the passengers have a right to opt-out in the agency must use the image filters. there must be no underlying image. no other image could possibly be stored. the image is the generic outline that has a spot that highlights for the anomaly is. we are encouraging the public in any other organizations,

especially members of organizations to submit experience to tsa. that showed a lot about what the agency has actually been doing on the ground. as always discussions in 10 about the reality and the ideal case, but very little about the reality on the ground. the reality on the ground is very different and airports around the country. the agency represented when the controversy started to pick up that they put into place in the d.c. airport come are members of congress who go through the airport they really gave signage about body scanner machines. you have the right to opt-out. the television screens explaining that these machines are and you have the right to opt-out. after all some countries got a piece of paper about this big and usually 25 feet away from the machine are right in front of the machine so it started too late to exercise that option and that was the best case scenario that she got the piece of paper

that this is a body scanner machine. in some places there wasn't even not. asking travelers to let the agency know what their experiences are on the ground. or some other issues to address citizen position to address. that's the ambiguity of the terms and rulemaking is so much is the terminology that is very ambiguous and allows for a lot of wiggle room on the agent she part anti-semitic comments on this. anyone who has any expertise on effectiveness of machines, what they're capable of detecting. we've received from the agent to the machines are not designed to detect powdered explosives. the literature racing put out by rapid scan other manufacturers have indicated the same, that machines are designed to detect haida to the objects.

ceramics are hard plastic, not powdered explosives. anyone who has expertise, it would be great if someone could submit comments. the adequacy of the cost benefit analysis and jim might have comments, but looking at the cost benefit analysis, is simply not accurate and doesn't take into account the real cost travelers suffer. the agency believes it's very good to allow people to opt-out of machines, but where is the classification for how expensive it is for people to opt-out of travel via air care? a lot of people began to travel by car, train and there is a cost to that. to look at the cost benefit analysis and take it apart because the agency hasn't taken it apart. the agency is put forth the most

favorable positions that can possibly put forth on these machines. to look at the health risk and really give us a good luck because tsa certainly hasn't. the agency when it started putting machines in airports hasn't had an assessment of the radiation risks created by the machine. to look at accuracy in description, to look at the impact of the agency program on travelers with prosthetics and other devices. machines are designed to pick up anomalies. a ladder colonoscopy bags or devices people might use after a mass at me. they pick up very personal, sensitive medical devices. to take a look at the layered approach that tsa says it has two airport security when we say their powdered explosives, what we hear constantly that this is

one part of a layered approach to airport security. let's take a look at that approach. let's not worry me, too invasive comorbid invasiveness is not justified by the effectiveness. send issue thoroughly addressed. the consulate denied machines are capable of images, but documents indicate clearly the machines were designed by tsa specification to be able to retain and transfer images. this sort of -- the stick figure technology the agency has put into place now doesn't necessarily solve that problem. if there's still an underlying image taken by the machine and overlaid with the more politically correct stick figure and match, it doesn't fix the problem of the capture of the

storage of a very invasive image. so we would encourage everyone here and everyone who's watching to really let the agency know what you think, to tell the agency what your experiences are with shame and if you have expertise and cost benefit analysis and radiation rest and issues to the agency now to take the time because it's a rare opportunity to comment on a program a lot of us are working for four to five years. this is a very controversial program and they managed to force the agencies to have to take your comments. to take this opportunity to comment on this program. thank you. [applause] >> edward hasbrouck, i expect you have a few opinions about the tsa new body scanning. >> i would particularly strongly

endorsed the ginger said, especially those of you watching. it's critical for tsa to hear from those of you for whom being required to submit to a strip search or enhanced groping is intolerable and have therefore suffered the loss of your career, loss of the ability to visit family, friends. tsa needs to hear from those who have been impacted. they want to pass this off as no one should care if somebody for all you know is in a closed room by themselves while they watch you make it. nobody should care about that. it is minor. especially those of you had your legs totally disrupted because travel is something we are entitled to take for granted. two other points. as ginger read the regulation, it basically incorporates the

idea of the virtual strip search machine into the authority authority tsa already claims that you must admit to screening. you must admit to whatever they say constitutes screening. it's critical to realize there is absolutely no statutory or regulatory definition of what constitutes screening. there's no way to determine if they say you have to do this, don't do that. the only way to find out whether you're allowed to do something are required to do something is to refuse their orders, the arrested and fight in court. that is wrong and that's a problem with the lack of rules that far transcends the body scanners. the second point i want to make more specifically related to the rulemaking is that it's key for

people to remind the tsa to travel is the right, that they have an affirmative explicit statutory duty to consider your right to travel by air. that is what's been missing from the whole frame of reference or the start of the post 9/11 agencies is any recognition these conditions are imposed on the rise. once you recognize conditions be imposed on the right, you have to recognize they are subject to strict scrutiny, including two sorts of analysis that tsa hasn't come back to you. they have to be shown to be actually effective, none of them for legitimate purpose, and witty look at it, most of what is they are effective for use drugs, not terrorists. they have to be shown to be the least restrictive alternative that would fulfill the purpose. tsa hasn't pretended to conduct

analysis. people need to remind them that travel the survey, which they must take into consideration. >> this discussion of risk analysis and effectiveness is one of the weakest points of the program. it is a program not only very invasive, but not very effective and nowhere and their cost benefit analysis within the 50 or so pages of analysis behind the rule change today actually address this, do you sit down and say this is the real risk presented if we don't put these ashamed into place. and do some sort of cost-benefit analysis on that. i know jim earlier this year or last year, you had an expert who is very good at estimating actual risks created and travel and after reading this comment

>> i have my work cut out for me. cato scholar john mueller does excellent work on management and cost benefit analyses and undoubtedly will be participate in the rulemaking. let's go to the audience shortly i might someone asks, what are the real and hit caused at the tsa screening program, which alluded to some of them and documentation of these 52 pages, most of which is not actually analysis. the literal dollar cost to tsa are many others and maybe we can brainstorm or discuss the other cause that accrue to passengers to airports and so one of so forth. >> is obviously the cost of the passengers who choose not to fly

because they don't want to be subject to these invasive -- >> @mantra, that in whose death, >> there's that cost. they take longer than no detectors, so there's a cost associated with that. i'm sure you have other comments. >> ltd. the other side, which is the cost of the travel control more than $2 billion by dhs on a cement of mandates of i.t. system. there's also a cost to travelers in that you are come help a government worker to provide additional information, not directly to the government, but for government purposes, you're required to provide information to the airline.

one of the reasons the airlines haven't screened moors they've got a government gift. they get a free ride with no restrictions whatsoever after you've been forced to tell the personal information and ability to use, so, monetize and other ways. it involves a massive government coerced transfer of informational property from travelers who travel industry and billions of dollars, though it's difficult to quantify. >> those of you that are a few years ago started: it came birthday. they didn't know how that if you're not a frequent traveler. only a few years ago wasn't the case. you have to share your gender and birth date. do we have questions or comments or in the audience likes wait for the microphone. i don't require you to identify

yourself. [laughter] >> by ninjas brian berry, washington correspondent for the newspaper. i thought of this issue because they spent years to negotiate agreement with the requests. when you started describing data that the u.s. government would have a trip taken within europe and not even on airline. can you recap how that ends up in the hand of the u.s. government and more generally on the agreement. i know that you apart from the volume of data was also the issue of the retention. , how long the data can be kept in there is no additional review. what is your view on this other two issues? >> we could talk all day about that. in terms of how does the u.s. government get the information

as i showed you about bus trips within europe. the data is dirty stored or copies are already stored or assessable and the u.s. that is possible because u.s. companies that do business have almost universally completely ignored the data protection law and because e.u. data protection authorities have completely failed to enforce the law. the whole agreement you are talking about only released to the mere copies kept by dhs at this data and does not cure the law by the fact that data is transferred in the commercial or to the u.s. but enough about that. the other part of your question was -- the agreement creates no

judicial review because by its own terms, it is nine enforceable in the u.s. all the agreement constituted to the minority because airlines travel companies have been doing that violated e.u. law would no longer violate e.u. law and did nothing to create a right of judicial review in the u.s. this is except for the privacy act as far as the government sector. dharna privacy laws governing airline reservation systems in the u.s. so it's completely unregulated. the agreement did nothing to solve any of the problems which predated and process. >> i'm not afraid to identify cells. the sesame honey, writer at tsa news blog. we been urging readers to submit

comments. they should at least know the tsa conveniently has started removing the rapid scan machines. i think they can say by the time the commentary voted on, they're now radiation machines. we've removed the mall. the machines have not been tested for safety and even if they were not averse safe, there's some invasive search of your body and also have a 54% false positive rate, set the alarm more than half the people who go through them falsely alarmed. before you submit, and, i would urge you perhaps not to dwell so much on the radiation because they were missing out. don't give them the chance to move your comment out of the docket. concentrate on the violation of our bodies come a violation of our right to travel freely in the fourth amendment violation and the fact the scanners or so in effect it would have a 54%

false positive rate. >> the one issue that comes up also resents you set off the alarm, you're getting the patdown. >> in the middle for her borough. >> by ms. helen andersen. i have been trying to get a case of invasion of privacy by military satellite surveillance into court for 40 years. our country is to be more invasive the people's privacy rights every year. attorneys will not take my case. my question is, why don't they do something about it? it the legal profession that's creating all this chaos. >> let's take that. what about private rights of action? the administrative procedure action with a number of cases around the country.

a >> we have seen several travelers use the case. the problem is an obscure provision that if you bring a case against the tsa, you have to do d.c. circuit or at another state procedural problem. it's going to be fairly difficult to challenge this if the courts have taken for granted the tsa has wide latitude in the sorts of searches that can do with an airport. they give great deference. there is of course the possibility someone bring a lawsuit if you find a court that is so sympathetic to the agency and takes into account the fact you pretty much have your choice of the nude scanner machine with a very invasive patdown not really from a fourth amendment standpoint a very effective choice. there's not a whole lot of groceries within that scenario.

there might be a better outcome, but it needs to be brought in the d.c. circuit court. >> those cases are calling on them to partially address one of those, corvette versus napolitano was brought by a software object or newer who's done that with day a remarkable job thursday. that is worth looking at these cases. they are still pursuing on an appeal. i'm going to boston after this event. the first circuit will be read for versus napolitano tomorrow morning, brought initially by a couple of harvard law students have since graduated and are continuing to pursue that case. they're not entirely dead come off a through as many procedural barriers as they can. and neither is the possibility to sue under the apa. we filed comments on it some families follow up on for

several years am in that kind of filing suit in a similar fashion that we filed suit on this one. >> i keep hearing about these entrepreneurs pursuing their rights. second row on the ohio. >> i'm correspondent from the coast media canada. those issues not to fight in in new york and she's and she's driving through transponder, your phone can be accessed. if you look at the suspicionless dragnet, how is gps that during and what is the government for fear will be mined on the gps constant recognition of where we are. >> the gps you have in your phone, right now not a whole lot of protection for location information. we asked congress to issue some sort of pro-legislation that would protect location

information and congress has thus far failed to deliver. there's also the automated license plate dealers said they saw this recently on the filed a freedom of information act, which is just about the only agents do we get to respond to our freedom of the nation act in anything under a year. we got back several memorandums of understanding they had. they been sharing their license plate data, not just with other agencies, but also with third-party companies. they venture in the license plate reader data with insurance companies, who then made sharing are widely but the larger web of calm to me as part of what are called the database. law-enforcement agencies as well as come and is associated with those enduring security related work. this data gets shared out on a wider and wider scale.

the license plate readers is one to definitely pay attention to. there's a lot of them in d.c., maryland, virginia as well another hole of regulation around that either. there is some hope for the privacy of location data, at least vis-à-vis the government after the u.s. b. jones case commotions, which is attracting case to the supreme court ruled unanimously there's a privacy interest in location data. we are waiting to see that trickle-down engages these have been attacking that pretty roundly. >> is also one of the loopholes you can drive a truck through them that cbp operates under what they claim is a complete quarter exception to the fourth amendment, which makes border region within 200 miles of the ocean consider border regions to be the virtual equivalent of the

border. cbp is claiming they could set up license plate readers in the areas where most of the u.s. population lives with no regulation whatsoever. for those who may be time to think, i don't care this much about the information, part of the problem is that it's innocuous here and now may be something you have strong reason to keep private somewhere else or some other time, were different rules apply if you're traveling internationally or where policies and what is legal and chain's for better or for worse with time. as part of the particular danger of not merely look at this stuff now, but recording in your permanent file against the future in whatever category you fall into, maybe the ones getting rounded up. >> there's great language of the privacy implications of location data and other sensitive data

that can come out if your location is being tracked. you may be going to a religious institution or political rally or an abortion clinic or a particular doctor's office, therapists office and all of that is very private information you might not want forever and then secret file somewhere. >> question down in the front. the mac advert come a dozen years ago it back pack two on the world for 20 before i left about your great book and an air ticket also in a thank you. it's another to be in the room with you. for those who don't know come in the is a living legend in the travel world. coming back to the right to travel, that law, right to travel seems rather narrow and some ways. what is the big picture of our right to travel and what would be reasonable exception? it's reasonable to record the

identity of everyone who crosses the order.

a asking for an injunction saying you're threatening to kill me and our children and so i went to court are bored enough to walk to my blog. we have established the legal process for no walk orders. they could be followed, but the u.s. government has never actually sought a no-fly injunction. they've insisted all orders should be standard administrative order. stopping you from travel should be based unless there's to arrest you. if you're not under arrest, not other option. your no-fly list is against those whose injunction. esparza should be put on it comes back to the scrutiny to be justified as a fact event

necessary for a legitimate purpose in the least restrictive alternatives that could that purpose. >> i want to talk about that injunction. we found something interesting in freedom of information act document and the fbi a few years back and one of the things we found this even if a court gives you an acquittal, you can still be included on the no-fly list. it's not enough. >> no-fly order as a whole class of litigation. no order has been reviewed at in a u.s. court despite vigorous attempts. >> you're not going to find out your no-fly list because according to the guidelines is variously called for them to give you any information indicating you are on the list. >> wait for the microphone for audio is online. >> a place to go back to one of the things you mentioned regarding when you opt-out and

get basically the search. what are the rules and guidelines on who they hire to do that? i found it so offensive in my daughter was searched at 13. the person definitely didn't know what they were doing. you have your squeezed, inappropriate behavior that no one else would be allowed, but there you see something you going on your trip. you have to allow someone to basically do they have any guidelines on the people? you have to sit there and allow your child to be abused if somebody right in front of you and discussing. >> i've never seen the guidelines. this is a very good moment to point out the effect goodness we as citizens can engage in against the agency here. when they started doing enhanced pat downs, people protested on

behalf of their small children being patted down by tsa officials. they did change his practice after that. they are subject to the same pat downs her body scanner machines. we want to push back on the agent fee. we can create real change, but that requires we participate in the notice and comment process and mobilize. >> there are no rules. that's the problem. >> other questions? >> would you go a little bit further on what the results have been, what do they say? tsa has been a hundred billion dollars spent in london train to catch terrorists. how many we gotten for the amount? >> is a very valid question.

bruce and i and some others have good writing and the national security theater. could perhaps make us feel safer, but don't eliminate that much more risk. oftentimes the programs are evasive -- invasive, expensive, but there isn't that much correlation between the elimination of race and those costs. it would be great to have someone who is a real expert on the risks presented and on the numbers 2%, to the agent the on the topic. >> we don't really know, although the answer appears to be zero. it actually testifies in brussels in ottawa, members have drafted this question in the response from dhs is this has been a success because they stopped so many people from

traveling. we haven't said anything to clarify those six temples of success or whether they're examples of cases they have deprived people of their rights. those are not necessarily people convicted of anything and if act appears in general they haven't. impress for success, they look at it and it struck arrest. >> truthfully looking at the recent history of attempted bombing, it might be more worthwhile to spend money and receive training on how to disarm the terrorists. >> it is worth noting terrorist card isn't the only success in a program like this. it has a deterrence effect as well and there might be some her for the decline to try what they were planning. given that, we could have been machines not collect any information at all and when people through them to make them think they're being this way. but they run short on time.

are there any others in the audience before we can clute? i have two questions. i'll start with the curveball. our audience may pick that neither of you are libertarian and i'm wondering what you would think of the policy i prefer alternately, to restore responsibility for security to the airline and the airports. it's not a surprising amount of current ta thing. a lot of people are more amenable than i would've expected. am interested in your thoughts on what the situation would be like for there to be private accountability in this area. >> would probably be facing a lot of the same issues. the collection of data would make a big difference to me or others and civil liberty organizations using this machine than who it is collect in the data, especially than a third party is often shared out.

perhaps there'd be more of a push on cost-effectiveness. but it's hard to tell. >> the airline industry receives enormous subsidies in part in exchange for their use of public resources in their agreement to operate as common carriers. again, speaking more personally, but the choices made when an early pioneer act of deregulation was passed in 1978 and the choices made to allow airline free choice of setting their own christ is, at least domestically. those provisions i showed you earlier, requiring an two respect travel is a and to a great and a nondiscriminatory way is a common carrier were retained. the key thing if you were to transfer security back to the

airline would be to maintain and orza continued obligation that they operate as common carriers and free travel is a right. if you don't want to take on all comers, you can pick and choose who you want to travel. if you want a license to or a communist to be subject to an obligation to respect the rights of customers. >> at the very least to get work and thank you. >> my way of thinking about the general project of bringing the suit that she did and the comment and tiny url.com/tsa comment, with tsa capitalized, for those of you who want to register your comment to. the overall scope of the project is to bring the transportation

security administration with respect under the rule of law. a lot of what we've been talking about is the rule of law with regard to air transportation and air security. with the issuance of this land contemptuous notice of what the regulation is, given the second highest court of the land asked for, i wonder if we step back on the project because the regulation will be good when it finally gets there and will have to do another few years of work to get a good regulation challenged on the substance of whether this provides benefit in exchange for the cause. i want to hear your prognosis, what you think happens, how this plays out, how long it takes to get the tsa under the law if we can't just get read of it. >> i think we just keep whittling away. we have seen some movement in

response to public outrage about the body scanners at least. originally they were subject to airline pilots to the body scanners because if you're airline pilots are flying a plane and you are to have control of the plane and can destroy it should you so choose. assumably you've got to the clearance programs to ensure you're responsible enough to fly the plane, so why should you go through the body scanner? the agency has made an exception for the pilot small children in regard to some screening. we've seen a push towards the automated target recognition machine. we camcorders the agency to get into line, but it's going to take a lot of follow-through. i still have faith in the democratic process. >> i would say we need litigation and is good that's

happening. we need to appeal to congress more because they haven't taken a this issue the way they should. but ultimately we don't get rice by appealing to somebody else. we have rice. we retain rights by exercising them. the only way really established this for people to say no to illegal orders, illegal demands. if you're prepared to do that, take the rap on friday. unless people say no, this is not going to move forward. >> you have to kick up a fuss. send in your angry comments. >> when we can have the government respected the right to travel on a phrase that in mind that as comments to the effect we have them, the government doesn't recognize them. it will be in no small part thanks to the work of ginger

mccall and edward hasbrouck. join me in taking them and thank you to all of you. [applause] >> people always like to ask me, how did you come across this story? people always ask writers that. what happens a lot of times is defined in a story while you're working on something else, which can be frustrating at times and that's exactly what happened. i was doing a little internet research one day and look at this photo. this is the photo i came across on a department of energy website and it put up a little newsletter for one of the department of energy facilities in the newsletter with a dismount it history, something along those lines. this one of the because is a beautiful vanishing point at the end of the room and a look at

machines that dials and knobs and i was so sick send and the woman just looked so lovely and have the nice posture in the 1940s hairdos. i read the caption and they said these young women, many of them high school graduates from tennessee for enriching uranium for the world's first atomic bomb. however, they did not know that at the time. >> today, maryland congressman elijah cummings talked about gun laws at the press club where he was asked about politics of gun. >> with 90% of americans supporting your measure in the ere notund checks and the fact,

aren't there more parents concerned about the lives of of their kids and their are leaders leaders at the mare, not even the membership of the nra andhih by which by majority supports these measures. what are the politics that poliw the nra tonscee a st allow open "the washington post," that your bill will be gutted and inserted with new language? what are the politics around that? how can we reverse it? are we going to lose the opportunity unless american selectively pay and not attention? -- pay not attention? willam so pleased that you all have a in a few minutes an opportunity to ask wayne pierre appear. -- up here that question.

i cannot answer that question, because i can only speak from my own reality. i do believe will all my heart that when you have 20 children children,little simply learning how to read "run, spot, run," getting ready for christmas and somebody comes in and murders them -- i said in my speech that there are certain transformative moments that happen in all of our lives. if that does not cause folks to say that we need

to look at the way that our country is operating and say that we need to do something about gun violence, i do not know what will. i will be interested to hear what the nra has to say about that. having lived in politics as lawyers i have, one that greatest concerns is these arguments go back and forth and we wind up doing nothing. we wind up doing absolutely nothing. i do believe that when you have pregnantents, they are with opportunity to make a difference. and if we do not act in those moments, then things will likely only get worse.

me beating upear on the nra. i want to work with the nra to bring about meaningful legislation so that we get something done. i want to deal with the bottom line. do we get something or don't we? do we have legislation, or don't we? the arguments will fade into the universe. the question is, have we accomplished anything. greg questio

4550 hours, comprehensive training for the school resource officers which covers everything from weapons attention to coordination with local law-enforcement is an appendix of the presentation. we also have prepared for the first time that i am aware of a model training program for selected and designated armed school personnel. this is probably the one item that catches everybody's attention. now, why we -- is this part of our recommendations that we have this model training program? first of all, there is the incident in pro high-school in 1997 where the inactive shooter

went into the school and killed two students and wounded others. there was no school resource officer. the assistant principal said, the -- left the school, went up to his truck and retrieved his 45 caliber semi-automatic firearm and disarmed the assailant which is an example of where the response is critical which is what disarms the assailant and saves lives. in the key is reducing weather not the training is crucial, access on his person who might have say it will lives in evidence since. so for one of the findings of the team went there once will that did not have school resource officers and there were already planning to our school staff for the protection of the kids. but whenever the inquiry was

made that said what kind of trained you have it was clearly insufficient training. of a going that process all across america without adequate direction on what is a good training program, modeled training program for armed school personnel. the emphasis is not talking about all teachers. teachers should teach, but if their is a personnel that has good experience, an interest in it, and is willing to go through training the 40-60 hours that is totally comprehensive then that is an appropriate resource that a school should be a value lies. the second recommendation is that we have to adopt -- states need to consider changing the laws so that it allows the firearm to be carried by school personnel when they go through this model training program.

and so we attach this as an appendix, a model state law that can be considered. >> you can watch the rest of the seventh from the nra at that c-span video library. >> so she was out there in no way that, as i indicated before, respectable women did not do. this is a new era. this is the time when the women's movement is under way. interestingly enough, someone like juliet fits into a certain extent. very conservative in some ways, but in terms of breaking through the traditional way that no woman should behave, she is doing it in a way that other women are not at that time.

>> a conversation with historians on the second wife of president john tyler is now available on our website. >> coming up on book tv cam on the front lines, books about the wars in iraq and afghanistan. next, rule number two, lessons i learned in a combat hospital. the military snipers followed by a panel that includes an author about one of the deadliest battles in afghanistan. you're watching a special weekend edition of book tv. navy psychologist heidi kraft was deployed in seven months and wrote about her experiences in treating the mental health of sailors in combat in her book will never two, lessons i learned a combat hospital. she spoke at the savannah book

festival. >> dr. kraft received a ph.d. in clinical psychology in 1996. during her psychology internships and drakes medical center she joined the navy as both an in-flight specialist and clinical psychologist. end of your 2004 when her twins were 15 months old she was deployed in iraq for seven months with some marine surgical unit. her book, "rule number two," is about her experience in iraq. today she is a consultant for the navy and the marines ptsd, posttraumatic stress disorder treatment program. please welcome dr. heidi kraft. [applause]

>> well, good morning. so, i have been doing a fair amount of speaking of the last few years. i have to say that i am quite certain this is my first talk in which the vice-president warm up the audience for me. it may not be the last, but is the first. i wish she was here to hear me say that and then very respectfully say? thank-you, sir, for such a good job. it is an honor to be with you. before i begin to have many veterans do we have in the audience today? thank you very much for your service. [applause] i was sharing with my traffic sponsors last night that during this many speeches sort of

becomes a little desensitized, but sometimes it still is emotional and the reasons for that emotion sometimes are obvious like memorial they. other times it can be things that are upcoming that take me by surprise. baseball season started. does everyone know that? we get -- the players have arrived in spring training. we will see whether as a big deal in san diego or not. here we are in baseball season is starting. this makes me think of my young man, a very special person and one of our country's heroes, close to nine years ago now he died sacrificing his life for his fellow marines. he was a young man and i had the privilege to know it for only a few moments of holding his hand. there were moments that occurred in an austere field hospital out

in that part of western iraq. we did not speak. he could not speak. i did not know him, not really. and yet because i have now come to know his family, have learned that he was much more than a marine, which won the euro. he was a beloved sun and brother if he was a baseball player. his wonderful experience at his high-school including a batting average of 408, to sell a record and he was drafted by the arizona diamondbacks, but chose the marines instead. as it often does i am finding that life comes full circle. it was two years ago on memorial day that by then a year-old hit his first out of the park home run. instead of standing up like a good mother shouldn't take a picture of him as u.s. coming into home plate and all his friends were jumping up and now

waiting for him, i was testing jason's mother to tell her. you know what she rollback? she said to my would give anything to see jason strike out one more time. like as said, baseball season. who knows. the bottom line is, i think, how do we go through these experiences and not be changed? we are changed. and those of you in the room who i asked to see your hands, those that you honor by being here today, your veterans of our past and present service, there are all changed. we have supported them through what is now of law were and are changed as well. the changes the whole point. what we are afraid of, dread,

and then will we cling to, depend on when everything else seems leading. the stories behind that chase deserve to be told. together as a nation we concelebrate them, a cry for them, led for them and move on. i believe that's the reason here today. i hope that after you as members of this very proud patriotic community will think of your service members and their brave families and maybe look at them with slightly different guys. most importantly in the apollo real plan in this long road ahead for our veterans.

february 2004i deployed with the marine corps surgical company to western iraq. at the time i was active duty in the navy and the babies for 15 years old. as said goodbye to my family in florida and headed out to camp pendleton where we come here ragtag group, but are things together and headed out to iraq. our job was to set up a mobile field hospital to care for marines operating in the area, there were a lot of them. i was part of a foreperson combat platoon. together we were rich folks will fund it to health treatment and care for 10,000 u.s. marines. this was a long time mayo, 2004. some of you will review this year as the year in which both

battles for felicia power fought. i can say for certain on behalf of medical personnel we could never have imagined a dreamed of the number of casualties you would see during that time. i decided that was going to write this list of things that were good and bad. i think that it was pro only the beginning of what became a lot of writing is therapy. that will bode -- be the most lopsided lest anyone had ever written. i said to it to my husband to forwarded it to 25 people. by the time are returned to florida in september the list, as i have called it, had

literally been forwarded around the world, and hundreds of the rows are waiting for me. people that wanted to talk about it, related to it. i have to say to my was embarrassed, overwhelmed, not myself in 15 different ways in did not handle the attention gracefully at first until i started hearing from vietnam-era marines, carry it -- marines even from world war ii middle me that the list made them remember and that remember it was apparent and then i was humbled. i thought i would share the poem, as it is truly the beginning of my story and it appears many others as well. things that were good.

sunset over the desert, almost always orange. sunrise over the desert, almost always read. a childlike excitement of having fresh fruit at dinner after going months without a. being allowed to be the kind of condition i know i can be and what to be with no limits placed most of all faugh, the united states marines, our patients what they every day and having every single person who passed by me say who rock, ma'am. having them tell me one after another through blinding pain or morphine induced euphoria, when can i get out of here? add just want to get back to my unit. mediate sergeant who lost an eye . he as the surgeon if he could open the other one. elected the marines, smiled to lay back down and said, well, i

only have one guy, but i can see my marines are okay. of course the one i will never forget the mother when it threw himself on a grenade to save the marine decide, the first marine medal of honor recipients as the vietnam war. my friends, some of them are lifelong in a way that is indescribable. my patients, some have courage of like anything i have ever witnessed before. my comrades throughout the surgical company, some of the things that they went through will be with them forever but still that provided outstanding care to our marines day in and day out, sometimes for days at a time with no break for seven and this month's. above all else holding the hand of that nine marine. things that were not good, kimmel's spiders come up was a scorpions, bats flopping around

in the darkness come howling territorial wild frogs, flights that insisted on monday i faces, giant living mosquitos and invisible sand flies that carried the leishmaniasis. 1302 degrees, soaring long sleeves, full pants, and combat boots and 132 degrees, random and predictable power outages that led to flooding. the resounding thud of exploding artillery in the distance, the popping of gunfire, not knowing if any of those sounds was cover bad, the siren of the big voice yelling at us to take cover. the cracking sound of giant artillery rounds putting up against iraq in there. the rumble of the ground shattering windows, hiding in their flak jackets and kevlar helmets a lawyer for the broken

windows wait until we come to a hospital. watching the black helicopter with the big red cross on the side lending and our paths, were still watching great marine helicopters landing in the pants because there were filled with patients and often we did not know they're coming. ushering a sobbing marine colonel away from the trauma but while he listened to his marines crown and pain, meaning a 21 year-old corporal with three purple hearts and listing to him weep because he was ashamed of feeling afraid to go back to the telling a room full of stunned marines and blood-soaked uniforms at the conrad they tried to save had just died of his rooms, washing blood of the boots of waterbury and nurses will she tell me about the one who died in the troubled bank and of the one she had to tell when he pleaded for the truth that is printed and make it. listing to another and varnishes

tell of a marine that came in talking telling her his name, about how she pleaded with him not to give out, but she could see his eyes go doe would he just could not find any longer. finally, above all else, holding the hand of the dying marine. so i referred to in the beginning of a baseball player. also the dying marine and the poem, course. corporals jason bonham. in april he can't do the doors of our surgical company with a very serious injury. many of you who have lived through something like this know that in combat medicine when a person shows no meaningful signs of brain activity there is no option of life support. that person is triage expected to and moved to a place where he or she can be given fluids, pain medication command support of a person dies.

i met corporal done and in power expected room, held his hand and told them we were proud of him. of course we had no idea how proud we actually work. in what now looking back and really only be a medical miracle , his status changed and he began to squeeze my hand in response to my voice. he was medivac. we did, in fact, risk that helicopter crew to get into baghdad and then on to germany, and he made it on to bethesda where his parents were waiting before finally died of his bones eight days after coming through our trauma by. april 22nd 2004. almost nine years ago now, was sometimes a still feels like yesterday and specifically one of text in with his mother about baseball. we later learned he had given his life to save the man in his squad by throwing his body over a live grenade.

there was an embedded reporter with his unit. back then we had all sorts of these reporters imbedded. he came through our surge in new company to learn of our experience. later he told our story to jason's mother. it ends up that that is all she really hope for when she heard he was critically injured that someone was holding his hand. she wrote to me that sort and thanked me for doing the only thing she wanted to do what could not to. we have remained very close ever since and in january of 2007 president bush posthumously awarded the congressional medal of honor to her son. they invited me to be with the applied house with that award was given where was very proud to be a single sailor standing among 65 marines in dress blues. in recent years i have been

privileged to attend with them the crisping ceremony of the u.s. as jason dunham, the navy's used to start -- newest destroyer. i am so fortunate through all of this and certainly not the only medical or religious personnel person from our services who has sat with a guy warrior on the battlefield. but because of the really truly unique circumstances around all this i know i may be one of the only ones who has led the fizzle story because have gone to know his family. i consider them great friends, and their cherished to me. still introduces me to people answer angel, which is completely overwhelming about coor's, she believes he fought to stay alive because i spoke to him he heard her, not me. i know we both need to believe that.

so, not the typical place for a psychologist to write? nothing about my opponent involve typical places for psychologists. what did i do in the midst of all of this i returned? i ran away, as many june after trauma kabyle of the navy to mechanical work altogether. was hoping to find some piece. during that time "rule number two" was written by accident as therapy. a vietnam marine commander retired colonel who has written several books about the marines in vietnam contacted me and said, you need to write a book where every line in the palm is a chapter. i was, of course to very special sense is a colonel and said, all due respect, absolutely not. i will write another word about this experience. you know what to once a month he wrote me an e-mail and said, what about the pope. and some nine months after getting home and sort of living

through this sort of vague strays suffering that as a shrink back in the fine quite easily but as a person cannot even realize i was going through . funny how that works. i finally wrote and said, okay. but why do? is published not because of him. is published because of stabbed dunham who told me she wanted me to try to get it published, so this whole thing is her fault. the most important part is that i learned that exposure therapy works. with each story that i wrote became progressively easier to read the words of the page. right about that time i decided it was time to go back to work with our wounded marines and have been there ever since. it is where i belong, and i get this great unique ever to be to try to be one of the voices that is out there trying to convince people that it is, in fact to seek help for was that no one can see.

someone very wise told me recently he feels like the country after all of this is in the midst of the slow-motion mass casualty. i have to say that those words struck a chord with me after being awakened by pounding murray's of the doors waking all of us up, mass casualty, the words mira little different for me to but i think that it fits. and in my humble opinion, that is because it is based on one thing. i am hearing is over and over again from my patients, from those in audiences who either ask questions in front of everybody or, better speak to me . is a sense that seems to be consistent across men and women, special forces command aviation, department of defense, medical. we seem to have this one thing in common, and it is important for all of you as veterans, family members, obvious members of a concerned community, import

fee to know that some of our current and past service members feel alone. they feel like maybe there is no way anyone could ever understand how hard it is to it meant that there is something wrong that no one can see. so the way ahead through that feeling for them away ahead to being healed and whole again kamal the changed because we are all changed to monday all will be moving to this together as a community. as a health care provider to applaud a long time ago and now here's from current warriors and their families, trust pms, you matter to our country's veterans , to those members of

your communities, your family members to me your friends, your co-workers in ways they you will never know. he take texture moment just to validate whenever it is that that person might be feeling, it is an extra 30 seconds maybe to remind that person, it is okay if your up thank. know for certain, please, as you move forward, that that one instance of locking nice, just a little bit of extra time will begun to a handshake or a month, you can actually validate that feeling of being alone and start a person on the path to healing. we do not need to be mental health providers in order to do that for one of the. sometimes in those moments of comfort that my shop and what can be chaotic in people's minds , those brief moments to be like changing. in closing, i will tell you a couple of other quick short

stories. that tent, pitch black. the 14 would you call that tom had different schedules, so everyone agreed it would navigate by faisal i went inside . my temporary cut was in the middle of the tent, perpendicular to the rest of them. the other women have personal items hanging over their costs. the air-conditioner built into the side of the tent forced to those women to used take blankets. i lived out of my al this pack. nearby collision was burning in casualties were flying too fast for the shock trauma platoon to keep up. two junior nurses live to there female officer tent. they've only been there two months of what with the air of

experience to critical care nurses and also the era of chronic sleep deprivation. to maris had come and awakened them at 02 wondered my third morning there. i had seen them catching an hour whenever they could. this particular that they had not stopped one minute. after eating breakfast and returned to the tent. 0800. the sun was warming mira. inside it was cold and dark. sensory deprivation chamber. a stumble through my packed for the notebook i used for mass of patience. the fabric store at the opposite side of the to was listed below in a flash a blinding light and dropped again. they entered silently. she did not even to cover bets but collapsed turcotte and pulled a blanket over her head. the well address to the corner of the tenth of the changed into a sweat the said u. s navy on the chest and right leg, sat on her cot, sighed deeply to end lower faced your hands.

a few minutes then she came over how are you? passed quietly. and lost on the table, she replied. very obvious. was it the first? yes. everyone just wasted, but it probably was not about losing him as much as possible of days. a couple of places to conduct of my head. i waited. a group of three campaign, she said. the captain was dead. he had been shot. i think he could have used cheap. he had been out there apply pressure and about his captains arms for a long time and did not realize that he bled out a long time before we got him. he just sat there staring into space. you would not answer our questions are talk to anybody. you know, that might be a good person for me to see. is he still here?

no, they took him back with them about 0500 this morning. probably best, she said, kicking the wood floor of a tent looking at her flip-flop plan feet. there was another one that came in with him. a getty, a triple amputee, lost a leg below the knee, what the heck, and the non below the elbow. amazing. she took a deep breath index held. things are getting tense. against the look on my face must have been stressed. i was running past and trying to get some supplies and he says, hey, man, i felt horrible. at that creates more morphine and i have been so busy and missed it. i would never jam and said, you're okay. ddb think? he said to my knee testing something. and the government. how many irishman does it take to change a light bulb? she said to my could not believe it.

what did you to say? he said, is just too serious in here. you people need to lighten up. he told judge the entire time we worked in there. it was like a stand-up routine. then that he landed in the can to get him. he waved at us with his one arm and give us the thumbs-up. we have been laughing so hard for the last half-hour, we sit there like idiots and watched them letting the man. they shut the hatch. the word liftoff and it was like opening the floodgates. everyone's heard crying. a few people even felt that these. she rubberize. i wonder he is now. anyway, i need to hit the rack. chicana and staggered back turcotte, fumbling to the darkness trying not to wake maria. she looked back at me. thanks for listening. that's led mere four.

what a great story. yet, linebacker apollo prosser lucky he can read to care of us today. i get up to leave. hey, how many? how many what? how many errors and is a take? she smiled. well, apparently it takes 21, when told the light bulb and the other 20 to drink until the room start spinning. so it turns out there are many stories i could have shared with you. after speaking with my house tatarstan that this was more appropriate for this audience than i thought. i guess there are a lot of irish-american folks here in savannah. there is your job for the day. it is interesting because as i look back on taking about the stories to share of audience is this one gives to mccourt cannot because it is especially wonderful, which it is

commendable because it may sound familiar to some of you. we all have the sort of life changing moments. this man was not a gimme. i had to change every raise rates and injuries. he was out kutcher plenty. ahead to make people unidentifiable for the book. and interestingly, i have no idea what happened to him or anyone that we took care of. we had zero tracking systems in place back in 2004. it is better now, but these people came into our surge of a company and in many cases to assess and that we have no clue what happened. the reason to tell you that story is because in this particular case there is part two in that think is a perfect description of exactly what i have been talking with you about if we keep our eyes open to every allow ourselves to grow and change and a positive way after a traumatic experience we see that life comes full circle

to images like my little baseball player who is not so little anymore. i get to see this canadian who is not getting. the book is associated with a terrific charity, the simplify fund. it helps injured marines and corpsmen who have been marines. a few years ago i was invited to a party with the board of directors on several of the fund recipients. the director had given my book to all of the board of directors as well as these marines who had been given various assistance. i walked into this restaurant and looked across the bar and there it was, but this study was not getting. he was checking a beer with 1% can't and his service talked leash was wrapped around the and it -- other. he was surrounded by women, and

they're laughing. so i knew it was him. asset to my husband who is unmarried, there is now lacking go talk to that guy. he said to if you know you will regret for the rest of your life. so nervous. whenever they're in it is myself and said, and the author of the book that karen did you. he said tamayo, that was a good book. i waited to kind of cringing. finally i had to ask of conoco to you think of your chapter? and he said, chapter in the said , called it the irishman and a light bulb. he said, that guy was a guinea. our justice-eric -- staff sgt. so i explained i had to change identities to my promoted him, i assured him that that was some. he took a long swig of beer and said to my going to need to read it now. and i said to me probably are.

before left a message to my just need you to know something. those medical people that night were exhausted. they were up to their knees in casualties and had been marching for three days straight. he saved them. elected me for a second and said, that is so funny. i always figured this saved me. it does not matter about which were talking. now understand why people got in touch after reaching the pole to million people from world war ii across generations the whole point is to listen. when i was there many of my patience kept telling me, you have to watch band of brothers. why in the world what i want to watch band of brothers out here in the middle of iraq?

thank-you, but no. i got home and someone gave it to me as a welcome home present which is sort of a strange -- anyway, there it sat wrapped in plastic for four years. and when you hear people speak of avoidance after trauma, that's example. i finally did get around to watch it. now i understand why they wanted me to see it. there is a title of one of the episodes this is why we fight. that is what the retractable. there were just trying to tell me what it were fighting. it's the same today as a dollars has been. it is for one another, the people to our left and right and it always has been. for all of you who have worn our country's uniform, supportive family members did commit thank

you for your service. it will always mean a great deal to us. and for all of you know who are part of a really amazing community a patriotic energy and support, you can be a cohesive, supportive, a protective role in the lives of your sons, daughters, neighbors, friends as they come home from the fight and give them what they need calling for word with the rest of the fight. for some of them that state will will be the greatest fight they've ever faced. you have the ability to give them permission to not be of patchy commit to validate there sacrifice and a personal and heartfelt way that there will never forget. so if i may speak on behalf of all the with thank you for your support of your veterans that we

are also part of. you matter to them. even arch us. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. of course. very happy to take questions. i think we need the microphone. of luckier question. >> i open until it burst near it is not of this. what is greuel one and what is a rule to?

>> said your have any "m.a.s.h." fans in the? a kent from the first season in a wonderful episode in which parker loses up person on the table and he feels torn up about that. henry coming his commanding officer says the only thing i know is that there are two rules of war. rule number one is the ten men died in row number two is the doctors can't change will number one. any other questions? >> you have any insights into the alarming and tragic phenomenon of the number of suicides and veterans which we are all becoming familiar with? in a thing of all that you could tell that could be changed forever? >> i think this is one of these things that the good news is

that all the services take it so incredibly seriously. had the activity is begin a few global conferences for the navy and marines and truly at the four-star level this is number one and number two priority is coming even about what you would think would be missions. it is truly alarming. the bottom line as far as we can tell is that this still comes down to the stigma that i was referring to that there is still , even with all of the advances that we have made in working to then make it okay to get treatment and health, there is still a true stigma much many of our war fighters around admitting that the nato for these loans. they're truly injuries, and that is the way we're trying to push it forward. this is not a mental illness. this is not something that makes you sick. it is an injury. is something that happened 12

person. treatment works. there's a push to try to change the way the people think about this, but it needs to happen in the mid levels of our services. mid-level leaders push that type of message out. atlantis will be decades before that actually is the case. i think unfortunately the suicide rate is a direct reflection of that, people just not feeling that they have a new return, they cannot ask for help . again, one by one we can change the. >> my father served in the second world war. was born in 1946. he would never answer any questions. he brought home by trunkful of not see flags and some swords had been in the artillery. recently have done some research on what he actually, where he

was somebody was doing. it sounds horrific just of the paper record. my brothers and i recently found some of those he brought back the shares that he was at one of the death camps early on and so forth. what i am wondering is whether anybody has done any study of this phenomenon you're talking about and how it was addressed with world war ii veterans? without really trying to figure out is how i get into the mind of this father who was totally silent about the author's life? >> there is a lot of interest and of world war ii generation of veterans because come as you say, they were very, as a whole, silent bus service. yet there seems to be this thought that many of them are quite functional and went on to live quite functional lives and seemed to do locate on the surface of least.

and there are couple of different theories. obviously what is there was just a less stigma. there was no possibility of receiving help. it didn't exist. you didn't do it. what did they call it? battle fatigue. even before that it was like a soldier's heart. something that made it sound like you were weak. if you have the soldiers are iran that going to -- so the names of the vault, but they started off extremely prejudicial, that it was -- so i think there was certainly that. then there was also the stuff that maybe because of world war ii people kimmelman chips together they had some times months to actually be with people who got it and decompress some of what they lived through and that, perhaps that may have been a troop protective factor

for many of them in the ability, despite the horror, which is too messy say, unfathomable but despite that committee came on with another group of people who got, understood him, did not judge him, knew what he lifter, live through something similar, there were able to know debrief and sort of move through a lot of the process together. that is one terry on why this whole generation of people live through something so bad since it generally go ahead. the unitary is that they just refuse to talk about it and refuse to let it bother them and just sort of command was that option. i like the first theory better because i think it makes some sense. the our veterans are home 12 hours after they were and iraq. it is really shocking.

>> cut the difference also have been the way they were welcome home? >> it could have been. the country was obviously different. >> there were parades. there were revered. you came home from vietnam and you were shunned. >> that's right. and certainly the country's involvement during world war ii has also have been protective of the entire country being part of the fight. so that clearly has to have been protective. vietnam, no doubt about it, the country's disinvolvement and even hostility toward those the five is clearly an additional risk factor for our vietnam veterans, no doubt about it. the. [inaudible question]

>> all right. different thoughts on the. but yes. directly in your volunteering to do it this is something the you're choosing to do in this should be headed for way of thinking about it, but i don't think anyone is ever come to the true consensus on the draft situation. you're right. that is a different factor is the ability to wars. >> this question may be frivolous, and curious. and the grandmother of 21-year-old boys to men that want to know he wants to children? >> well, that is a great question. their grandmother was part of that. my parents actually left their home in sacramento and came and left of my husband of florida to help him and obviously that was a great comfort to me to know that there would always be with someone who adored them. unfortunately it was tough on their relationship with my husband. one of the casualties of our war

. not so good. i think having them there was clearly helpful. my husband was out of the marines by then. so he was there, working, but there which was a a good thing, clearly, for me knowing that the father was there. it was not come for him because as a marine harrier pilot he was supposed to be the one and was over there, not me. he was better suited to gallon that was better suited to stay. we both agreed on that. there's clearly a lot of what we call cognitive dissonance, it does not make sense. none of that made sense. there was a sense of command was almost like he resented me for going. he had flown for 12 years and never get the chance to actually blow open a path for infantry marines to go through which was what he was supposed to do. it was a challenge.

the good news is, the kids have all sorts of support. and they were really what matters the most. >> this is back to the question of what we do with an individual coming back who has these internal ones and it seems to me that when you or learning how to fight for your country you're basically told to suck it out. and you live with that psychology and the protection and that gives you the courage, if you will, to go on, and do horrendous things. then suddenly to dismiss all of that and leave that mentality, that is where probably the problem lies, how you make that

transition. when you mentioned about being of a share, and your watching cis are something. and they address this problem where people come home and they don't know how to relate to the people of to look beyond. so is this one of those serious issues about individually trying to take away what you had to know to go in to fight to do these things and replace it with the therapy? >> to some extent, although the attempt to change the way we think about these wounds and his injuries instead of illness is an attempt to try to make this akin to a badly sprained ankle. and so whenever i get my chance to talk to a big group of marines and sailors a second of a commander one knows what it looks like when you spread your ankle.

so went to was sometimes burst. here's to walk. everyone knows what you should do to in the acute sense, take care of that ankle. get off of it, put some compression, some nice, maybe take vitamin and, tran. and so we all of this. then i say come and go with me for a second. what if you don't have time or you are embarrassed. believably step talion go out and do crazy things they should not do in boots, but that as a whole other lecture. so you walk on it for weeks, months, long time. is it possible that no one will know how bad this printer if a list? well, sure. you can't take it pretty good. sunday i tell them, even you have to take a shower. detective do not. know what is your ankle look like? that does not look good.

you don't have to be a carbon to others of the room with an ankle by the time that happens. alexa, baldy and the like. so you'd said to the dock and decency to the physiotherapist. that tell them conoco one of the physical therapist gives you some exercises and some different things to do and you are patient and you do exactly what that person tells you. is it possible that you end up with a stronger, more flexible, more resilient ankle at the end? and they'll have to admit american men's pro with possible. meanwhile on watching light bulbs coming up on top of all these had to the audience. of course, the punch line is, this is no different. a normal person century, is that we recognize an attempt to cover-up, a moment when you can't anymore intrigued -- and

treatment. this is what we're trying to push forward. you learn as you have to be healthy and ordered health care unit. the same thing goes with this. it is being taught at the very junior levels, and we're trying to move up quickly through the ranks. we will see how it goes, but so far it is accepted. on the senior side it is definitely accepted because they know, we have to keep these hearings healthy. i hope that will be the case. still free to use the ankle analogy if you ever need to. one more question, untold. anyone? no pressure. it does not have to be a great question. what here. okay. can we have two more? all right. >> i have a friend that recently came back from afghanistan to my double amputee.

i am proud of him. now he wants to go back and honestly at the keys crazy. can you explain, they just want to go back. they have given some much already. can you explain this mind set to me? >> actually, their workshops we give where there's actually a title of the seminar, why want to go back. it's very common. i felt his come as much as, really, but you do because there's a sense of knowing what you're doing. a sense of real confidence in combat. everything is very black-and-white. your role is very clear, is expected of you is very clear. there is no additional stuff going on. it is you and your unit and what you have to do. that is really nice. it's very simple. i think that when you get back and there are all the different pieces floating around the family in the future and your injuries and everything is just

to fill complicated. so the year for the simplicity where everything was simple. in addition, some people become trigger adrenaline junkies. i still have to fight with a lot of my patients about their 100-mile per hour motorcycle riding. you're killing me. but they feel, they tell me they don't feel alive. they felt a live in combat. that was a live. this, you know, we have to work on increasing pleasurable activities in the lives and realizing it's never going to look like that again, feel like that, but that's good because here he shouldn't feel like that that's just a very specific feeling, and we don't really want that again. it's normal, and there are fair amount of deputies that are returning to active duty and even deployment. it would be a different role than what he was in, what is possible. you know, hopefully you will

move through his transition a kind of see where he can contribute to the army, where he can contribute to the army or to his community in a different way and still find pleasure in turf that. our last question is here, the estimate here. in the blue hat. >> hi. i am a psychiatrist. i have treated many veterans from vietnam to the present. one of the problems i have but you said is that there is a marked difference between a normal see that most people experience and the horrors of war. people of the military in wars see things, do things come and experience things that normal people have no idea what they are. >> that is true.

>> and it is very difficult for those two groups to understand each other because people who have not experienced it have no idea what it's like. people who have experienced it don't understand why the people who have not experienced it don't understand it. and so they live in two different worlds in which the military world is almost like another world where they are experiencing things that are used -- what you said, her in this, exhausting, that kill beyond anything. and normal people don't know how to relate to that. and so there is tremendous difficulty in getting back into the normal world because their world will never again be normal . >> your absolutely right about that. there is no doubt, and when you say the problem with what you said, you need is for a strike

to support people? is that what you were addressing to back. >> my specialty for many years was treating traumatic brain injuries, so i understand your analogy about injury verses of this very well. ..

>> or have someone that is concerned to try to help it is important to make comments that i have no idea where you have lived through and i will not understand it but i am here if you want to take me along. whatever it was, it's okay. i am still here. that general exceptions can be helpful. i know what you are trying to say. >> speeeleven. >> he said people were not normal but their experiences so out of the realm of

normal compared to living here in savannah day to day. >> i don't think he meant that. i did not hear that at all. what he meant was the experience or the typical american living in savannah maybe that is a normal day going to work maybe that is what we define as normal but combat is so very different maybe just a different way to define what you have lived through. it is very different than your neighbors if they have never gone to war. i think we are done. i went over. thank you very much. [applause]

>> independent media will save us they are the most of powerful institution on earth more powerful than any bomb or missile. it is an idea that explodes on to the scene that doesn't happen when contained by the box, the tv screen that will

look back for so many hours per week. we need to hear people speak for themselves outside the box. we cannot afford the status quo any more from cool warning to global warming. you as

will be available for purchase at the signing area. we respectfully ask you to turn off your cell ph >> howard wasdin born 1961 nov raised in georgia at the cumberland college before in tom listing with the navy worry he served a search and rescue swimmer and he reenlisted in order to get theo necessary steps to become a navy seal.lete then he would join the warfare development groupecial known as seal team 6. within the joint special operations command. fo following honorablell

discharge and then wrote "seal team six" memoirs of an elite navy seal sniper" graduating from marietta a georgia.canada brandon webb born in canada and 1974, raising california worked on a fishing boat and joined the navy 1993 in the gave his -- began his career as a surgeon rescue swimmer and completed underwater training and served combat deployment to southwest asia and served as the navy's seal and is the editor inef chief and the media commentator and is co-author is

of the 21st century snipercircl. let's give them a round ofunof applause. [applause] i'd like to turn the time over to howard wasdin forard presentation.ation >> good afternoon. can you hear me? a little cross section there is a myth out there aboutout anals and what type of planet we come from and who an we are but i want to give you a cross-section and what it means to be raised in our country but before i do that if a buddy who has served in or the military or has please stand up.to police give them a round of applause.

[applause] [applause] >> thank you all for your service. just so you know, navy s.e.a.l.s are a hot topic issue right now. chicks dig it and all that stuff. the guys you saw stand up is every bit important and we all have a mission to fulfill. without those guys come and nothing gets done. there is something happening in the country that i just don't understand. we need to love each other. let me talk about the success of that recently my first book, "seal team six", i was real fortuitous with the timing. [laughter] [inaudible]

although i was accused of such a thing, it was fortuitous timing. i am more proud of this book than almost anything i've done in my life the letters i have done show me that i might have been spared for a reason. that is the "seal team six" book that you saw last summer. you guys are the first people in the first television people. easy day for the dead will be out in october. before that, i had to military success. does anybody know why they give you these metals? because they don't want to give you a raise.

[laughter] silver star is one of the need is created and that will get you a cup of coffee. the purple heart, i have mixed feelings about that. i basically look at that as a navy marksmanship medal. just so you know, before success, this is how i grew up. i was raised and born to a 50-year-old mother. i was born two months premature. i almost died because the facts around my lungs have been developed completely. after that i was adopted and moved to a small town in georgia and a be used. daily. not like beat with a test, but be with the belt regularly. then i decided to run away from home.

it would be nice if the federal government, i had a tough life, i can turn out like jeffrey dahmer, given that background -- but this is the house i grew up in. this is a good picture of the house. the house i grew up in had a sagging part in the middle. i stayed in the part that was not heeded because i was the adopted child. you can figure below my room. i have a hard time with kids today to have horror stories about how bad that they have it. my parents and give me an iphone. you poor thing. [laughter] but i told you that the success

came to me abruptly. i say this in my book and i say it all the time. i went from rockstar to rock bottom. i felt good about myself as a member of "seal team six." you guys have all seen black hawk down. that is the only bad time i ever had and i was shot three times. i went from more than human, it was kind of like a wake-up call for me. got your attention, god got my attention. when i got shot, my thought process was this happens to other people. oh, my god, i am being shot. we are out of ammunition. you hear about people seeing a body on the ground and

everything goes on slow-motion, i didn't see that, pitchfork or anything. but one regret that i did have was that i until the people that i loved that i love them enough. i was raised that you are a weak man to ask for help or tell to be loved him. you have to be a real man to tell the people that you love them. so i made got a promise. i think i was bargaining with him at that time. if you get me out of this, i will make sure to tell the people that i love that i love them. my daughter, rachel, she was sitting in the front row. when i came back from somalia, she and i really didn't have a relationship for about four years because i was in a dark place, wounded, divorce, lived in the jim beam bottle for about four years.

but she can tell you now that i never miss the opportunity to tell the people i love. if i die tomorrow, i know that i was given a second chance and i was able to fill that. through all that, what brings me to my main point today is we are the best nation in the world at taking people and turning them into soldiers. we are the worst nation in the world of taking soldiers and re-assimilating them into society. you'd be amazed at the number of. >> host: stress letters we get. people are coming back, and they are asking for help, thank god. part of the reason is we have made it okay to ask for help now. someone who is a navy s.e.a.l. sniper, they always we must be okay, does it make you aware, this means that you need help. it makes me so mad when i hear

young people today, adults do they say that if we would have had things like this country or that -- do you realize that everything in this country that we have is god-given? not one person sitting in the room, me included, deserved to be born in america. by the grace of god we were born into the greatest country in the world. we are americans and i think we have gotten to the point where we are willing to exist. let uncle sam help us out. let's make him responsible for our well-being. let me tell you that when uncle sam was dumb of me, i was sitting in a wheelchair in georgia contemplating suicide. i was no longer an asset, so i felt like i was a liability. the shooter that shot the modern feels the same way. i am out and would like to

address content the skill set and how my going to feed my family clinics we have to find a way to get our soldiers, especially the elite soldiers back into society. i think part of it is this. i speak to a the loudest schools and colleges and i think somehow we are missing who is responsible for our children. every school that i speak at, teachers tell us it's not the kids, it's the parents. if i got a paddling at school, i hated going home because it was double jeopardy. you're going to get it again. teachers say now that if you discipline children now, it's not their fault, it's your fault. so we have made other people responsible for our children. that is a dangerous alley. i came home one day and my stepdaughter is on her cell

phone in her room and i hear noise in the driveway. you see these little cars that have the tailpipes on the back. okay, look at the people driving those. to this guy drives up in my driveway, get out of his car, starts walking across the driveway, pulling his pants up, he has a chain hanging, a piercing in his lip, thing in his nose and a bunch of hardware. and i am carrying the trash out looking at him and i don't know if i am more appalled at what i'm seeing in his face or the fact that he's going to walk right past me to my door. so i got his attention and said hey, where do you think you're going. he said i'm here to get your daughter. i said, okay, get back in the car, go somewhere, put a belt on and pull your pants up, get the hardware out of your face, and instead of walking past me, talk and asked me to see my daughter

and i might let you do it. so you guys know how that works. i go in the house, not an evil person. and i get is laid on me. you are being very judge mental. you're judging someone based on how they look. i said if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it probably is a duck. she told me she hated me and i needed to grow up. so she came to me a couple weeks later and said you were protective and i just didn't get it. and i said remember that in life. if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck it's probably a duck. we have to take care of our kids. two primary choices in life, as americans we are not listening to this. except responsibility to change conditions if you need to. i could've stayed in the jim beam bottle.

but when i came to the realization that something will change in my life, i have to be the one to change it. when you are in that dark space, it is not the light that moved. find a way to get back to the light. this is a country of people and those of you that know the book, this is the little boy that stepped on a landmine. he was dying from an infection. we bandaged him up and as bad as we have in the united states, we have some school shootings, we are not fighting for our lives everyday we don't have landmines in the playgrounds, we don't have rpg is flying at us as we go down the street. we are the most blessed nation in the world. here is what i think we are missing as a country is the ability to love each other.

nobody ever asked what somebody's color was in the navy s.e.a.l.s, religion, whether sex was, if they were gay or straight or anything. the only thing we ever asked is are they american spirit if they are americans, i will go in and help you or i will die trying. i am not here to preach to anyone. but if you read john 150113, that says greater love has no man that he lay down his life for a friend. they're there are people willing to do that day in and day out way more than i ever did. so we have to appreciate those people. what you're missing about those people, they are doing it for love and not doing it to be a tough guy. they are not doing it to have a badge on her chest or so that kids think we are cool. they are doing it because they love their fellow americans.

i will tell you one more story and we will start the moderation. this is how far firsthand that i have seen us as a nation. i am stopped at a red light and i look over to the right and there is a man laying in the road in savanna, georgia, he is laying in the road, water is running past him, i see him struggling trying to set up. and i thought i will change lanes and maybe help him out. my heart grew for a second because i thought these two young men get out and i thought, thank goodness, we still live in a country where people help each other. that would've been a dog, people would've helped each other. one gentleman snaps a picture. does his little gang sign, snaps

a picture of this gentleman in the street. when i pulled over and picked him up, i came around behind him and put my hand underneath his arm right there and said, pull your right leg forward. and he couldn't do it. and i'm helping him and i tell him again if he doesn't get it, so i reach down to feel his leg and it is a prosthetic leg. long story short, he couldn't get up because of the prosthetic leg. when i carried him and sat down and drink some coffee with him, and he spilled more than he drank, this man was a veteran from vietnam. he had his leg blown off. he climbed into a bottle, never climbed out of the bottle. i would have been not manage several more millimeters would have been a closer to the

bullet. just remember that you don't know where they came from and you don't know what's going on in their life. but regardless of what you think of that person, will we have to get back to his loving each other. i don't want to tell everybody that wanted to sit here and tell y'all that i love you, but i'm going to do it. i love you all as americans and thank you for coming. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, howard. we appreciate it. some of the things that the audience wanted to hear from you guys is that both of you, you

had a time in your childhood growing up. it wasn't exactly easy with for the way that a lot of us had it. how did that prepare you for training and becoming a seal and who you are today? >> that's a good question. i just got back from africa. it's like everything is trying to kill you over there. i recovered from a nasty flu. i apologize for not being my normal self. [laughter] howard and i -- one thing i have noticed, whether it is howard or myself are a lot of navy seals, we come from these crazy different backgrounds. the one problem that i see what everyone is you dealt with adversity in life. i had a little bit of different

upbringing. i left home at 16 years old as well. and for the most part i had loving parents. they were hippies were trying to figure out how to be a part of the navy s.e.a.l. team. i have actually worked on both from such a young age. i actually had a try scuba diving boat that i worked on. long story short, we end up taking this trip around the world and i made it to tahiti before my doctor may ask about when i was 16. i left home at 16 years old in the south pacific and on my way back and put my way through school and joined the navy and was an aviation warfare at the

time that i was warfare operator. learning how to deal with adversity and understanding not, my parents let me play sports, they let me leave it is important if you do get knocked down that you give back up and learn from your experiences and keep driving on. i really prepared myself for that training. what i think of hers other guys as well. >> one of your things in your

book says that you are in the middle of the basic underwater demolition and navy s.e.a.l. training. he said that there is a point that during training, i could actually visualize myself and that is when i decided i would make it through training with a tried and order a conference and i guess you are beat down mentally and you don't want to quit. that was after hell week. there is still down in your mind about something that is going to come up that could trip me up.

i thought i would physically die doing it. once you flip the switch, like i am going to succeed or they will put me in a body bag. that is pretty powerful motivation. you can pretty much at that point congress anything. that was the defining moment for me because like i said, i had a picture of myself going back home and showing the one man in my life that i actually had the tried and on my chest. nothing is going to stop me now and that is the type of thing that you have to have your life.

>> when you are in the middle of hell week in your instructors plea away from the group, instead of kicking sand in your face, they were begging you to quit. >> and have us saying that you don't want to be that guy. out of 220 students, i was that guy for the first five weeks. it was brutal. i trained with the regular navy fleet and i was mentally prepared but physically with the calisthenics, does not have a level that i should be in. i was on every extra duty, physical training, sign up, i had to show up early with a group of winners to do extra physical training.