that's because of the work of dorothy sinclair and others. to set the record straight, she was not a hater, she was blonde and opinionated and brilliant, but she loved her children, she had a traditional life, a married woman, i think in peoria now people remember her as being brilliant and gifted. there has been reluctance to embrace her, but she didn't care. she's not in embraceable type woman. it's hard for me to's say because i'm so enmeshed with her and my friends, but i think she's being thought of more highly all the time. >> when i tune in on the weekends, usually its authors sharing their new releases. watching the nonfiction authors on book tv is the best

television for serious readers. on c-span they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subjects. book tv weekends, they bring you author after author and it's like the work of fascinating people. i love book tv and i'm a c-span fan. this is book tv on c-span2. television for serious readers. here's our primetime lineup. starting shortly, former washington post reporter provides a history of the military industrial complex. sarah discusses the cost of higher education on book tv "after words" at nine pm eastern. at 10, he takes a critical look at the official crash of twa 81996. we wrap up six. we wrap up our sunday primetime lineup at 1115 with the recent appearance on c-span "washington journal". talking about his book on the supreme court, supremely

partisan. that that all happens next on c-span to book tv. first up, here's marlene mccartney. >> okay, will begin our program now. can you hear me okay? okay. good afternoon and early good afternoon and thank you to everyone who came to our program today and a special welcome to our speaker, molly mccartney.

my name is david i'm an english professor and i will be introducing today's program which is part of the 18th annual literary festival. in my mind, fall for the book is the best co-curricular and extracurricular extracurricular event we have here at george mason. in fact it is not a close second. if you haven't done so, please silence your cell phone. also, at the end of the program, help improve the festival by filling out the survey that that is there at your chair. this information is this the book staff as they plan future programs so thank you in advance for doing this. following today's lecture there were be a book signing at the book sales table right outside the door of this room. that's a service provided by our campus bookstore. in addition to the book, the

event is cosponsored by the fairfax democrats, it would not be possible without such sponsors. the book featured today is the product of two distinguished career journalists. james mccartney, now deceased and his wife molly mccartney. for nearly four decades, as a reporter for the chicago daily news and later, he covered the principal institutions of our federal government with the special emphasis on war and conflict which he covered him more than 30 countries. molly has worked as a reporter for more than 30 years including 14 years at the washington post. after her husband's death in 2011, molly continued the

research and writing of the book that he was working on in his retirement. the co-authored product, america's war machine, vested interest, endless conflict is a carefully researched and masterfully written description and analysis of the present day complex and greatly enlarged version of what president eisenhower named the cautionary remarks as the military-industrial complex. america's war machine is the most important and timely book and we are very fortunate today to be able to learn from its co-author. please give a warm welcome to molly mccartney.

thank you very much for that introduction and thank you for coming. i'm going to use a slide to illustrate some of the points that i want to make, but i want to begin with a description of what i'm going to talk about and then we'll go into the details. as he said, this book is based on jim mccartney's experience which included his service in world war ii on the frontline and in germany. of course his reporting over more than 30 years, starting in the early 1960s and continuing until his death in 2011. because this book represents his thinking, i want to first tell you about him and his background, how he came to go into the newspaper business, his style of reporting and what he learned from his front row seat

to history. i will also talk briefly about how i came to finish the book, find an agent and a first-class publisher. then we will talk about the point of the book which talks about some of the things that were mentioned in the introduction. jim wanted this book to be an introduction to the ongoing washington debate about war and peace. he wanted people to know what he had learned. he wanted people to care about this issue as much as he did. he wanted people to understand what he had come to understand. he wanted them to know why it's important, how it affects your pocketbook and why everyone should care about this issue. i'm going to begin with this quotation. naturally, the common common people don't want war.

that's understood. the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. that's easy. all you have to do is tell them they're being attacked. denounce patriotism and exposing the country to danger. it works the same in any country. the person who said they knew something about taking a country to war, he understood militarism and how to whip people into a patriotic frenzy that can lead to war. does anybody know who said this? if not i will tell you it was the the cheney. it was herman goring, the nazi war criminal who was convicted in 1946. what he described as what dwight eisenhower, in his 1961 speech calls the military-industrial complex. it's what jim mccartney and i

watched expand in the year since then into a war machine that has led this country into endless conflict. most recently and ongoing, think of the push for the u.s. to go deeper into syria. in fact, think of the in less conflict, the never ending war and covert action in which the u.s. has been involved in since the end of world war ii. how does this happen? how in the world can anyone suggest that the u.s. military is undersized, unready and underfunded when together we spend more than the rest of the world combined on our military and national defense. let's start by looking at the vested interest that results in actually leads to u.s. wars and interventions.

president eisenhower named two of the elements that are part of this machine. what he said, you can see again, this was a great quote in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwanted influence, whether or unsought by the military. the potential for the disastrous ride exists and will persist. we've got to element with eisenhower. the military and the industry, the beltway bandit and the contractors as they are known. jim mccartney covered that speech. in his story, at the the time, he was working for the chicago daily news but he was based in washington. it explained in detail what eisenhower was talking about. for example, our 25 billion-dollar tug-of-war, that's the kind of money that

was involved then, today it would be much bigger numbers. there were five parts to the series he wrote. again you can see the pressure is on as the contractor's work for the approval of the weapons they want to build. it went on to talk about how lawmakers, the military rivalries that are involved and how these defense pressures really come down to a one-way road. so, what we know from eisenhower 's there are two elements to this. those stories by the way that i've just shown you led to jim winning a scholarship to study at harvard university for a year and dig deeper into this issue. it also led him to ultimately decide that america has an addiction to war.

his passion to the tell the story grew out of his own story. is anybody in here 18 years old. okay. in 1943, we were in the middle of world war ii. the world was on fire. the first thing that's happened is you are drafted immediately into the u.s. military. now, think about that. maybe women too. the innocence of that. it is hard to capture because one of the things that always struck me about it is he's 18 years old and he just graduated from high school p he was drafted and he doesn't know how to drive a car. i'm a texan. i started driving when i was 14, but this was the 1950s.

in the 1940s, gasoline was rationed. rubber was ration, cars were not as common as they are today. if your family had a car you certainly didn't turn it over to your teenage son to go driving. he didn't know how to drive. his parents drove him to the railroads and dacian. his older son had already been drafted. after basic training, he gets on a ship with 5000 other troops and cross the atlantic and they end up. [inaudible] this was for five months after d-day. he was not part of the normandy invasion were so many people died. he was part of the third wave. they get to southern france and that their day to and they get

into trucks where they are brought north 400 miles. this is november and they haven't been able to give him winter clothes. they get out of the truck that they can hear the guns going on. he sees a mountain trail with some men caring stretchers. as they get closer it's clear what has happened. the stretchers have a g.i. who has stepped on a shoe bomb which was the iud of the day. :

with this kind of strategy. now, he never stepped on a shoe bomb but he was in combat under fire every day trying to stay alive as they are pushing the germans back into germany. they all thought they were going to die, and many did. he thought he was going to die. but in late march of 1945, this was only a few months before the war actually ended he was hit by shrapnel in germany they were walking down the road and if you don't know where the german 88 days, i found a picture -- you can see the picture on the left

is the time he entered the military and then after two years in france. he was about 6 feet tall and at that point he probably weighed 120 pounds because you don't get a lot to eat when you are on the frontline. so the way they work is they shoot the shells over the enemy on the other side. they have great distance and when it got close it would explode because it hits something or ihit somethingor il everywhere. so if you heard them coming you took cover. and on this particular day they were walking down a road there was no cover and they all threw themselves into a ditch tha butt hit them anyway so he was hit and airlifted to a hospital but

recovered with no permanent injuries. he goes back and enrolls in michigan state on the g.i. bill, gets involved in the college newspaper, falls in love with journalism and then after graduating from michigan state enrolls in a masters program at northwestern. he ran out of money after it was used up and again this is middle america in the late 40s and early 50s. not a lot of student loans. his father offered to loan him, not to give him a loan him the money to finish which he took the money and pai paid the debtk $5 a week or something like that. so he ends up as a reporter for the news and in 1960, he gets sent to washington to be part of the bureau and that's how he came to cover eisenhower's 1961 speech. he liked to tell people how he heard the speech.

he heard eisenhower told the speech. when you were covering that speech no one was in the office of president eisenhower. you either have advanced text or you've followed along and work your story. in listening to this, he also talked about the economy and about the military-industrial complex. his reaction was what is this guy talking about, what is the military-industrial complex, how does that work, why is it dangerous and why should i care? so those were the questions in his mind that as a reporter in washington he wasn't in the position to ask questions and get answers and that's what led to the series of stories i showed you earlier. 1968 he moved from the chicago news to the bureau, at huge

chain and he became the national security reporter for the papers that included the miami herald, the mercury, every paper that you could imagine out of washington. nothing in the "washington pos post." and he began to cover national security. he was like the foreign service because they had no bureaus at that point. he was in the non- and in and out of the soviet union on a regular basis. saudi arabia, all over the middle east. now remember there were no cell phones. there were no computers. he had a small portable typewriter he carried along with a bottle of whiskey with the operators to make sure your story got back to washington. briefly we will get to the bookt in a minute about these are a few of his credentials. one of the last ones would have

been between gorbachev but these arwere some of the stories. this is from the 1965 intervention in the dominican republic where president johnson sent troops into you can see already the theme of the stories. then we have the story where he's reporting and again, reykjavík. this is a column he wrote about does america loves peace as much as we think. the book that reflects all the things that i've described is also based on my own experience as a journalist for the papers including the "washington post." my specialty for many years was what they call pocket book issues. very good experience if you're going to write about the

spending because this is the biggest pocketbook expense of all. so i was able to combine the military-industrial complex with what i knew about dealing with big institutions including big oil and also helped that i'd studied a lot about the middle east at georgetown university and also harvard where i was a fellow and i've done a lot of traveling as well. so the result of all of this is the book. and as i said, what the book does is document the expansion of the military-industrial complex to include these additional elements. so, we have five altogether. we have the military, the defense contractors -- we have congress committee intelligence community and the think tank interventionists. these were the five that he saw

emerge and wrote about and documented that are a big part of this book. so let's go individually with each of these. starting with congress which supports billions of dollars in security spending and the campaign contributions. so a good example of what happens with congress as the story of the cargo jet. there's two parts to the story. in 1990 when dick cheney, 1990 secretary defends. it was the guy over the pentagon and the defense obligations wanted to purchase 120 of these. once they were built the program

was supposed to stop because that was all the military needed. congress disagreed. they voted to provide more than the pentagon wanted. they voted to fund 151 and later 18180 mbytes of these numbers appear because i know that it's hard to follow so that was 1990. 20 years later the defense secretary is robert gates, and in april of 2009, he goes to congress and says okay, 205. that's enough, we don't want more and congress voted to fund 223 and this was at the cost of 250 million each.

[inaudible] it's the same plane, sorry for the confusion. the question is why did congress do this. why are they giving the military more weapons and airplanes and tanks and ships and the military want? because the program like a lot of these others is a kind of welfare program that supports 650 suppliers and more than 30,000 jobs in 44 states. it offers jobs for companies, jobs for workers, political

support for cooperative lawmakers. if there is a safe vote for any member of congress, it is a vote for defense, armaments and programs. anyone who fails to vote for the programs and to support the defense establishment will be attacked as weak on defense and is going to hear about it in the next election. it is a bird and a plain, that's what it was. but this is only one example of how the congress perceives the pentagon. there's a lot of other examples. more ships than the needy ones, more tanks for the army than the army wants. you may remember the story, this is a fairly recent story about

the tang. again the headline tells you a great deal about it. this is the way cnn played the story, thanks but no tanks. as you know, congress voted to continue making the tang. why did they do that? because the little town that made the part said th there goes our economy and they went to the representative and said you have to keep making these because it will ruin us and if you are a member of congress you can get others to vote with you to keep them going because you're going to vote for him and his programs when they are subject to question this is a sort of scratch my back and i will scratch yours at work. i would also mention ronald reagan's idea.

that program proposed in the mid-1980s has never worked the way that it was supposed to and it's still being funded by every president that has come along even though it hasn't really worked. again, get it into the bureaucracy and it's really hard to kill it. now some people would say so you are spending on defense giving us jobs. what's wrong with that. the problem is the research shows you get more jobs with them on defense spendinthenon- u get with defense spending. and we know this because the university of massachusetts did a study and they found if you take a billion dollars of federal money you get 11,200 military jobs but if you spend on clean energy jobs, and you get more. if you spend it on healthcare

jobs you get more. if you spend it on education jobs you get more. and at the bottom line of that study was spending on the military is a poor source of job creation. let's talk about the intelligence community. this is another major element in the complex forces that can lead to the war and i'm talking about the flawed and sometimes twisted intelligence threats. or as it is put here. we know in the run-up to the iraq war in 2003 the president of george bush wanted to remove the action and we know the case was the idea saddam hussein had

weapons of mass destruction and that was based on intelligence and it was twisted to justify the invasion. one of the reasons we know that happened there are several reasons but one is there is a secret note released by british intelligence. in other words we need to show the public why we are doing this and so we are going to make the intelligence be the basis for our action. now if you think about it, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the intelligence community taylors information. if you work for somebody, you

give the boss what he wants or you will not have a job for very long you are exactly right you give the boss what he wants. this is about the beautiful blondes by. it's the state of the union stan message in january 2003.

there was an ambassador by the name of joseph wilson that happened to be married to this by who wrote an op-ed that appeared in "the new york times" challenging what bush had said. one week after this column appeared in "the new york time times," columnist by the name of robert novak published an article about wilson's wife and the fact that she worked for the cia. he ruined her job and all of her contact people that are then subject to all sorts of things.

i don't know if anybody died as a result of this but there was fear that it would. there's a much longer story to all of this. it's based on information that's totally wrong. there was a missile gap in the kennedy administration that turned out to be false. there was a failure to proceed at the berlin wall as 1961 and the failure to proceed at all. you'll remember how everybody is so surprised because the intelligence didn't see it

coming and the union in 1971 and the failure to precede the terrorist attacks. when president eisenhower made a speech there were very few tanks, a few but not very many and what they did as they sort t of turned out the policy papers. they don't think, to justify thd according to one of the critics by the name of jonathan alter. now, very recently, just within the last few weeks "the new york times" the huge spread on the way that these think tanks operate because ideally, you would think it's a think tank,

it's independent, it's a nonpartisan point of view and research and conclusions. but what "the new york times" reported and what the book shows is the think tanks actually are often pushing the agenda. and they had a couple defense contractors as examples of how this happened. elizabeth warren was outraged by this. you remember there were stories about her reaction. is a very thinly disguised form of lobbying there's a good youtube piece of her talking about this. with the exception of the libertarians at the cato

institute, the conservative think tanks are very aggressive on interventions and on the way in which america uses its military to manage the world. the group that provided the rationale for the invasion was called the project for renewed american century. it's the small arm of the american enterprise institute which is the largest and one of the best-known conservative think tanks. the. who signed that letter saying let's get rid of saddam hussein? donald rumsfeld, paul wolfowitz, richard perle and others who

favored the new america to extend american influence around the world. president clinton as you obviously figured out ignored the letter. but on september 20, 2001, this is nine days after the 9/11 attacks, he writes to president bush who is now in the white house repeating its call for regime change in iraq and this time the people that signed the 1998 letter were actually in the government. perl was in advisory role and dick cheney who was a supporter of the program was now vice president. and what happens, we invade iraq. it wasn't the cakewalk that many said it would be.

instead we upset the balance in the region, and no weapon no wes destruction were found. the cost is now into billions into some estimated trillions of dollars in disaster, not a pretty picture. in fact, if you accept the idea that america is a peaceloving nation as many people do, this is a very disturbing view of the world but it's also an example of how the washington-based system works. we have seen a presidential campaign in which candidates call president obama peak on defense and urged that the u.s. take a more aggressive and tougher stance and role in the middle east. they called to rebuild the

military which is simply not true, not necessary. they want to send more troops to battle and as you may remember ted cruz wanted to bomb parts of the middle east. chris christy wanted to establish a no-fly zone and shoot down any russian plane that came to the area and as ron paul, the interventionist libertarians had, welcome to world war iii if you do that. as for donald trump, we can't be sure what he will do. he's been on both sides of all of that. but we have the think tanks pumping up the papers and innocent a war machine that drives the things that are done covert and i want to give an example of our involvement in iran. not many people here were born in 1953 so a bit of history.

[laughter] dudes you recall when they helped depose the democratically elected prime minister of iran after he nationalized the british oil company was the prime minister gone we helped install the shawl that provided some order in the country and ensure a smooth flow of oil while repressing his own people and committing many human rights violations. many of the people that overthrew in 1979 were people who blame believed us for having supported them all those years. they are the ones that took the diplomats hostage and took to the streets screaming. there were other reasons as well but this played into what happened. so, why are we surprised that they hate us?

in 1964, the government told us that one of our routine patrol boats had been attacked for the second time in international waters by the north vietnamese. president johnson quickly want a resolution from congress allowing him to expand the war in vietnam. guess what? there was never a second attack. it wasn't a routine patrol boat. it was an american spy ship quipped with devices to pick up communications they thought they could hear if they got some of the command centers. now even then the secretary of defense has said okay there was no second attack. the fact that it was presented

as the basis for getting the approval from congress and johnson to expand the war into which thousands of more people died. you may remember president obama was recently in whilst talking about all of those dropped on the vietnam war. because there seemed to be the trail that ran through, we sent in a candy member of the numbers thethe numbersthey were so horre amount that we droppe draw fromt country many of which never exploded and they are still killing people they are out in the field playing. and this visit they said we would give more money to try to locate before they kill more people. and of course we have most

recently the invasion of iraq. again we were taught we have to go in because saddam hussein has weapons of mass destruction, but he didn't. and today, iraq is a mess that has opened the door for isys extremists who pose a new thre threat. "the new york times" recently had a column by someone who is one of these middle east experts that said iraq ihave said iraq r isis and saudi arabia is the father. now, let me talk about that a little bit. we just shudder when we see isis that having people on tv or the internet. terrible. but guess what? saudi arabia routinely beheads people including recently a cleric they didn't like to have

donwho havedone things they fely didn't support the monarchy. and i would also note that osama bin laden, who had been offended by the presence of american troops in the 1990 gulf war declared you will pay for this. you have put your troops on sacred ground and we are coming after you and the david. 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were citizens of saudi arabia, where the religion is so conservative women can't drive much less dough uncovered outside the home. let's follow the money for a little bit. i want to get to questions that i want to put some numbers up here. but also want to talk again about one weapon in particular and ask why do we keep spending billions of dollars to build weapons systems that do not work

at least not the way they are supposed to such as the v. 22 this is what "time" magazine said, it is unsafe, you can't shoot straight. it's caused $20 billion now heading for iraq. after i mentioned that in a talk one of the military guys came up to me and said they fixed all those problems. it's working just fine now. so i said thank you i'm not sure that's right but i appreciate you telling me. they said it's an expensive bust that can't be used the way that it's supposed to be used because when they try to fight the missions with this thing if this don't go the way they are supposed to. he referred me to a video

showing a v. 22 crashing. meanwhile, the father of one of them held said he was going to sue boeing for the design flaws. i hope you will laugh at my next example. does the u.s. government really employing more musicians than its military bands than it has diplomats? yes. this is something walter pincus has written about in the "washington post" and something that former defense secretary used to joke about in some of his speeches. so just how much money are we spending? we spend more than we did during the cold war, more than in

vietnam, more than all our enemies combined, and you can see this is based on the 2012 reports the numbers are not the same now. the last one i saw the defense budget was three times with china is spending and here it was a little less. david that works at "the wall street journal" has a book called red ink in which he says the defense budget is greater for the next 17 largest vendors and he wenspendersand he went td them. i would note that when you think about what they called discretionary spending and this is after medicare and social security and all the other things, 50% of that is for

defense. if you add the pentagon and all these other things associated you are getting into a trillion dollars a year and again this is based on some research by one of the experts on the issue. another way to look at the defense spending is what has happened since the 9/11 attacks. the soviet union collapsed and a lot of people thought we are going to get a peace dividend and we won't have to spend so much on defense. there was a slight decline. it didn't go down a lot but we were not going out anymore. then we get to 9/11 and it just goes off the charts. they couldn't throw enough money at the military. i talked to one woman wasn't

anybody objecting to this and she said if you suggested spending less in the military it was considered treason. anybody that had those ideas to them talk about it publicly. it was seen as unpatriotic and it wasn't something you do. i think i have another slide that shows the increase over the years and you can see it really shot up from the red. now one of the problems is the imbalance in what we are doing with our resources. we are putting all of our money into the defense pentagon military side and very little into the diplomatic side. this imbalance is something that the people that were ahead of the military in the speech that the admiral who was the former

chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the speech at kansas state said the foreign policy is still dominating the policy and the two generals and admirals that we need the overseas command. so you have to ask is it a coincidence that the they crashed one of the airplanes into the pentagon while ignoring the state department or was it they understood the sources of influence to that drive. when world war ii ended, soldiers came home, then wtonige got the korean war and the cold war. since then we've maintained a large standing army and a huge intelligence bureaucracy that's

been involved in endless conflicts around the world. we have been involved in something almost all the time that has resulted in the death of milliondeathsof millions of t billions of dollars. i think the number is now roughly $6 trillion the reason those numbers keep going up is because the people who weren't injured come home and we are involved in medical care for them for the rest of their lives and the cost of medical care as you know keeps going up the other piece is the first to maintain the flow of oil and to

make sure those pathways remain open. in 1980 there was a sort of crisis in which president carter threatened to use nuclear force if necessary to keep it flowing so we are still living with the consequences of what we have been doing and continue to do in the middle east so you have not going on and that's are tired of the war and our involvement especially now that we are less dependent on the way over the forces for the war keep pushing. now, i have one more piece and then i want to take questions. jim was good at taking questions to sort of eliminates the truth and he would say why does the media go along with these

conflicts? why does the media support by demonizing of those that are very bad guys but don't represent the fact that hitler did? said, i want to wrap this up with a few words about the media and the complicit role that he sometimes plays. there are three cases in the book one is about iraq where the cheerleading on the pages of the "washington post" and "the new york times" was deafening. for example the day after colin powell made his speech that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction therefore we needed to go in and take him down, the "washington post" op-ed had a series of articles that would have been opposed to something like this after

listening to colin powell and i am persuaded. the middle-of-the-road guy found what he called a trooper and we knew george will would go along with it and richard cohen and other liberals but agreed with colin powell. "the new york times" is also doing the same thing and it was clear in the cover, not just the opinion pages that everybody was on board for the war. the times eventually ran a sort of apology which they acknowledged they had inflated some of the stories. the post never advertised the editor did him in answer t in ae question as he was retiring said i guess we do have to replace some of those stories.

now i am a creature of the media. i love this business and i think that the free press is the central part of the society and while i have talked about instances the media field to do their job there is plenty of examples where they did great work and you would know of course about bob woodward i and the break-in that led to the downfall more recently you have the "boston globe" and the stories which as you know not only got to lots of pulitzers for the work but ended up in a movie called spotlight and if you haven't seen it, it is a great example of what the media did and by the way, the editor of the globe at that point and who was responsible for the

stories is now the executive editor at the "washingto of the" and we are lucky to have him. i hope you will think of those ways in which the media can do a good job and the way in which jim mccartney did a good job to get people to think about them. when we were living in florida key became a very popular speaker shannon he was very good at talking about these issues but when bush invaded iraq he began to focus more and more on the war and peace angle and when he was finished making peace talks people would say i had no idea. would you please write a book explaining all this. that's what he was working on when he died in 2011. and at his memorial service a

few weeks later one of the women that had known him and had been active in getting him out to speak said what's going to happen to jim's book and i said i really don't know. i have to get back to you on that. she said you need to finish the book because it needs to be out there. so, it did take me a little while to get through the material and make sure that i had everything i needed and there was a way to get everything else i needed and it helped that i have been had beeg to this for 30 years. so i kind of had a graduate course in national security at the dinner table. it also helped as a reporter i am accustomed to researching and writing and also knowing a good story when i see one but i have to tell you i'm also a skeptic. one of the things they tell you

in the newsroom i don't care if your mother told you, you better check it out so i checked out everything he said and made sure that we were exactly right. so, the common people don't want war, that's understood and this works in the same way. i'm going to briefly summarize my point and then you can ask me some questions and i do this in the form of takeaways sobers me go through these quickly. we keep going to war without regards to the cost of the war. according to the website, cost of war, it's now about $6 billion. despite the claims that it was going to cover all of this. many people still believe that

we should operate as the policeman and to impose democracy everywhere even when there is no tradition or belief in democracy, and who have no institutions to make the democracy possible and even though we failed to make that happen i would note who are our enemies today quite the military people would tell you that they are worried about russia and china but if you watch television much you would come away thinking the terrorists are the problem but the fact is they win when we overreact and i would argue that we have been overreacting since 9/11. the example i heard somebody make this comparison in the presentation not long ago you

are more likely to die from a fall in the bathtub and for major terrorist attack. so the perspective here is important. think about this, the pentagon budget is about ten times more than the state department. we put our money into the military and we keep trying to use it to solve political problems. when there is no military solution to these problems, that's been what we have been hung up on, the military can go in and take everybody else that woulelse butwhat happens then wg to stay there forever and become the target of what they don't like about us? there is also a disconnect between the military and the civilian population because we do not have skin in the game as we did in world war ii where everybody was involved. now we have a volunteer army and it goes off and does these things if we don't pay a lot of

attention unless it makes headlines. then the middle east. we went because of the oil and we stayed because of the wailing and we are still there because of the oriole even though we are less dependent on middle east oil today. eventually this could change the power structure in the middle east, and also our involvement to serve the transition period of what is going to happen. even i will say this, he did bring up the issue of the fact that we are paying for this. we are making sure the oriole is open and available for our friends. they are spending their money on health and education and other things and we are pickin that wp the bill for their defense. that is an ongoing issue and i think president obama talked about what he called the free riders. we are sending our guys and our

money to make sure they get oriole and it's all part of this effort we should manage the worlworld into people do it by g this. if you haven't read the books i would argue that i would recommend them. he's a retired marine colonel, and he has done wonderful work. so, i'm going to read you some notes from a presentation i heard him make not long ago. we are on autopilot like the war on drugs the war in the middle east has become part of our lives. there's bipartisan approval with the politicians declaring support for the troops rather than questioning the policies of. they all help perpetuate the war.

in addition there is a need for self-preservation among the foreign policy people. we do have an interest in the middle east stability but more bombs will not create stability. to think the military can shape events in the middle east is absurd. we have been on a binge to publish the wicked, reward the faithful and sustain the idea that we are exceptional. perpetuating the war doesn't advance america and one day america will awaken to this end the war will end. right now america is slumbering. so, questions? i will tell you a friend of mine said that sounds interesting but is there any sex in your book and i said i sort of mention general petraeus but other than that it's mostly policy won't so

please come ask me questions. -- what i have been doing is talking about the book because there is so much in it that it helps connect all the dots. i've done some alternative right now i'm just doing book talks and getting people to see this as a military-industrial complex. it's an introduction to the issue to understand who is pushing what and so forth. >> you might want to drag in religion and ideology. one of the reasons we are in the middle east is the christian evangelical right who believe a certain course of action is necessary to bring jesus back

and they are a more powerful lobby and any defense contract. >> maybe you answered this in what you were saying earlier. one of the planes on the military overspending is the fact maybe i have the wrong name for it but the f. 35. are they paying for more and more and more into just sitting in the hangers so my question is now that we are out of the immediate wake of 9/11 we can say things that were considered treason back then. how come nobody in the military is saying wait a minute we have no use for this?

>> it was seen as the latest cutting-edge weapon that was going to keep us at the top of the military around the world and so if we went to war we could meet everybody else with this. the problem is that it's a very complex plane and they've not been able to figure out all the bugs and problems some of which are in the software. every time they think that they've gotten everything fixed, some new problem pops up. i talked to somebody just a few weeks ago to say what's happening with the f. 35 and one of the things they haven't considered is why are we spending all this money to develop this troubled product that is a man with an when we have the drones that don't have to be and they are a lossless spendthrift so if you are going

into the warfare it seems there would be less of a role. but the other piece of it is that they operate off of the ships and they can't fly long distances. again the question is why are you doing that when you could have these unmanned drones, so yes there are continuing problems with the f. 35. >> i don't quite understand the answer. >> "the new york times" apologized for the overplayed on

why they did that. here's what happens. i will give you an example. although the media was on board there were reporters questioning the mass distraction. they were not putting his stories on the front page because they didn't believe the stories. they believed the government. a better example, they had to reporters. you don't get the same kind of help. your calls get returned. it's like i will get to you later so what you do is you

don't try to get to the top guys anymore. you go to the middle people who are doing all the work and no what's going on and those were the people that were saying we don't see this evidence of the weapons of mass destruction so they were writing the stories and what happens quite the philadelphia inquirer did and run some of the stories because they didn't match. they believed "the new york times" instead of their own. there is a herd mentality in the media that does take effect in cases like this where is everybody is reporting it must be right and if you report something else, something is wrong. how do you prove it so that's

one of the problems in the media. we all know it's there in iraq was one of the worst examples. there was a whole hour long program and they had jonathan and walter talk about their experience. when you are running up against the government saying this that's the problem it is also the problem that i if those "new york times" guys didn't write what their sources were telling them they could lose those forces so there's a relationship there that's also part of the problem. anybody else? he has one more question.

>> you want to dig more if you want to keep going into this issue of central intelligence because that's how it is really done. they were doing the thinking and planning for iraq and they reported to paul wolfowitz, we know this. that assessment had a couple of analysts who took the curveball around to half a dozen other national intelligence agencies and briefed them so all of a sudden we are getting different agencies telling us the same story and we are thinking that this is multiple source intelligence. it wasn't. and the national security adviser didn't do her job.

>> you get these complex bureaucracies competing with each other. maybe they want to hang onto their information but they don't want to share it with that guy over there because he's not on our team and so therefore you get mixed results, and not very good decision-making at the top. useful add o that on the 9/11. it turns out the fbi knew some of the hijackers were here but they did until somebody also somebody did and tell them so it got lost in the maze. these are complex problems. there isn't black and white. >> thank you very much. i hope this was useful.

you are doing a great service and i hope you can speak at many and i hope your book reaches a wide audience. it is a most important book so thank you for all of your hard work. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the

..

very complex data about the implications of financial weight and income and being able to graduate college. it was so readable. >> thank you, that was the goal. >> can i read you a quote from the book because i think it captures the essence. this book is intended to be a wake-up call. it brings the lives of students pursuing college degrees front and center and unveils their financial struggles. ensuring that the american public has a clear picture of why financial aid is failing to get students to financial aid and this will help us find effective solutions. what chose you to do the study. >> this came out of a long-standing set of research of mine on why some people finish college and other people don't. i've been interested in that kind of trick question for much of my career. one of the things that experts