thank you for that question. i think our time is up but i want to say well, i am so thrilled to see so many people here and i think this could be turned around. thank you. [applause] >> but tv is on twitter and facebook. we want to hear from you. treat us or post a comment on our facebook page. >> i have the honor of

introducing academic colleagues who also happen to be a best-selling author, columnist, speaker, commentator and senior level management strategies. our guest speaker has worked with presidents and popes from here at home to south asia to iraq. for more than 20 years, our speaker has provided strategic and crisis communication counsel to companies, policy organizations, government agencies, not for profits, advocacy campaigns and grassroots groups. he has served in many roles including executive director of republican party in new york state, the advisor to the us chief of protocol at the vatican, planner department of the state visits of former president bush and clinton to the synonymy ratted south asia and director of communications for the environmental protection agency.

our speaker is currently an adjunct professor at fordham university's graduate school of arts and sciences. our charter member of the board of advisors at liberal arts and sciences and an opinion which appeared to forbes and the host of sunday in america on sirius xm radio. for seven months in 2004, he served at the senior press advisor to the coalition for visual authority in iraq. he earned a department of defense joint civil service combination. his experiences and perspectives gained during those seven months form the basis of this book, tough sell: fighting the media war in iraq. please help me give a worn welcome to best-selling author, tom. [applause] >> thank you very much. i appreciate that warm introduction. this is a wonderful term out and

i am honored to be here with all of you. given the state of new york city's subways and trains i didn't know if anyone would make it tonight but we have a great room and again, it's a great privilege. as you know, ron is a quiet guy, very modest. for those of you who don't know, he has tackled some of the most complex security challenges facing the city of new york during his career particularly, after 911 and he is a great public servant. thank you, ron, for everything that you do. [applause] i would like to take a minute, if every all of our veterans and those who served in the united states army, would stand and be recognized. i would appreciate that. [applause]

thank you very much for your service. i would be remiss, at this point, if i did not also think ambassador john bolton, former ambassador to the united nations, who honored me with a wonderful forward for the book and i really appreciate his support for the book and for this important message. it is a great privilege to be here at this wonderful institution, the union league club of new york. fifteen presidents have been members of this venerable institution since its founding in 1863. its members have played an important role in the national discourse on a wide range of issues and as ron mentioned, they also managed to construct the statue of liberty, the metropolitan museum of art and get rid of boss paid on the way. it is a great privilege to be here. it's fitting that we are in this historic room to talk about

tough sell: fighting the media war in iraq because this book is about history. how we make history and how that history is shaped and perceived not only by ordinary people but by people who have the great fortune, in many respects, it being thrust into extraordinary circumstances. on behalf of our country but also increasingly the business of journalism, technology and politics. how we perceive the iraq war today was shaped by all of those things at a time in history when we are seeing several profound shifts in the way that people view the media, government, and for itself. the most common question that i get is why do you write it? why did you put it out now? first, the shift that i mentioned in the government ability or inability to counter

them has assured that the great work of thousands of americans went over to iraq, sacrificed much and took great risk to help create a better future for that country, in many respects, they have all been lost to history. second, the policymakers in today's day and age do not effectively articulate policy, manage their message, and counter the editorial filter they will soon find themselves unable to execute and sustain that policy. in the case of our national security policy, in my opinion, that places america and the rest of the world at great risk. certainly, what was lost in the wall-to-wall media coverage of the worst of the war was the very best of people. the real story about what happened during that critical first year after the fall of

saddam hussein gives us a glimpse into the glory and imperfection of humanity as well as the very real evil that exists in the world in the face of god that can be seen even in our darkest moments. third, over these last number of years i have watched as the coalition for authority has been lambasted by the media, so-called opinion leaders, and politicians on both sides of the aisle, in my view, unfairly. the civilian story and the story of the civilian coalition that first year has largely never been a great focus of attention. what happens behind the scenes in the palace has rarely been discussed. my perspective, as a civilian bush appointee, being thrust into the middle of the fight and the fight to communicate about the war, as well as the work of so many hundreds of my colleagues on the reins of

issues, i felt it needed to be told at this time. after all, our heroes in uniform are the only folks participated in the iraq mission. civilians played a key role often left unseen. their boot camp was the battlefront. their bullets were their expertise. there uniform convictions and it is my hope, that by unfairly evaluating the successes and failures of the iraq mission, history would ultimately record the unbending purpose of many coalition civilians as a triumph of american spirit and sacrifice. the book is a chronological and also very personal. it tells the story from the day i got my phone call when i was sitting in my office on pennsylvania avenue and ten days later sitting on my luggage in a 130 degrees heat in kuwait waiting to go into baghdad for an instrument monotype and i made up the fact that i would be gone for about four months to convince my family that this

would be an okay thing to support. it is very personal. i thought about writing a straight policy book about public policy, how you communicate about war and the age of 24 hour news, social media et cetera but it seemed too impersonal. it seemed too cold. it almost seemed inappropriate given the work that was done. we were also personally and emotionally invested in what we were doing. the environment was foreign so many of us that not injecting a heavy dose of what it was like for me personally and going through that experience didn't seem authentic. i also wanted the book to be accessible to a broad range of audiences. i wanted to write it in such a way that it told the story and it was chronological and very conversational. there are plenty of stories and

when you read the book there are plenty of stories about this guy with no training on ten days notice down in baghdad with no place in his best in the weapons training trying to craft a message from middle eastern and western media about the works that thousands of americans are doing to rebuild the country in dusty offices and bombed out buildings and a dangerous environment. talk about the brightly clad curtis children running in the dirt like trans, being told by a special forces member of our special forces to remember to roll down the car window before throwing out the grenade, middle-aged kong dancing at the disco and the children of the arabs and the victim of the gas attacks. seeing women draped in black at the masked graves clutching the pictures and photos of the family, dealing with death, dealing with rocket attacks,

feeling real fear, and of course, seeing glimpses of hope. those were all part of the experience. embedded in the pages is also a running commentary and for the first time a real analysis of, not just the news media, this is not a book that beats up on media bias but the political institutional and philosophical challenges that hamper the bush administration's ability to deliver a more balanced, more realistic view of what was really going on in iraq against the demands of business journalism and media bias. the lessons about fighting the media war are even more relevant today than they were back then. in our time of fake news, media worse, a president at war with the press and the press at war

with the president, the indisputable truth is that the government still has to make policy. our communications change in our technology changes and the way that we talk to each other, the way that our influences try to influence the policy and that all changes but at the end of the day, the government still has to make that policy, educated and sustain it and that requires public support.

the administration of george w. bush was the first to deal with this shift. the challenges were philosophical. and operational and compounded by this beneful audience at home. the tensions made the tough sell of the iraq policy even tucker. there was a philosophical war. he spent a lot of the last number of years debating with

or not we should have gone into iraq. but the more relevant conversation for all of us and the country moving forward remains, once you make the decision to go to war, what is the principal purpose or the desired outcome and how do you get there? you have several choices in the case of iraq. for when you can remove saddam hussein in leaving or two, you lose the leadership and grade general or expatriate and impose them with absolute authority basically training another three, attempts to secure the country and build institutions that could support not what some people have suggested some sort of american-style democracy but more participatory pluralistic and tolerant government structure. the collision for authority in iraq was developed to execute that third option. and they tackled his

extraordinary task with great passion and commitment. sacrificing much with their efforts largely going unnoticed as the security situation worsened due to the rise of al qaeda in iraq. and the violence. unfortunately, government that as this went on often failed to aggressively defend its own policies. the issue of competing philosophies was apparent virtually every day. the secretary presence had this vision of a high-tech smaller fleet footed military. but that was, which is fine, but that happens to be incompatible with the mission that we had at the time. dealing with lawlessness and leaders and insurgency and a civil affairs operation that all needed to be done at the same time. on my first day in iraq i got off of the plane, put on my helmet because they told me to put on a helmet. i got on the bus and they said by the way, the road between

baghdad international airport and the palace is closed because there been to many attacks on it. and i said great, this is exactly what i want to see. first day i get in there telling me, they called it the road of death. it was not particularly original name but it got the point across that we had a problem securing the road between the airport and where the headquarters was going to be. one of the events of his first conversations, and to talk about this in the book was supposedly ominous but astute question, how to get the us military to start shooting the looters? because we needed to demonstrate that we were going to use force in order to ensure the country would be secure and to restore some sense of lawful behavior. you also clearly have philosophical differences between the military and state department. the foreign service officers, while they clearly had their own important priorities, often

did not play well in the sandbox with the folks in the department of defense and certainly also the bush administration appointees from the white house. there was an operational or bureaucratic war as well. operationally the challenges were immense. the cpa was a unique combination of the department of defense, department of safety, the nsc, the white house, cia and intelligence agencies all operating under our feet at all times. and it was a textbook lesson in building in a very short amount time in managing a bureaucracy. by the way no one had really done this before, and this impacted what i did for instance, every day. because being part of able to craft a coherent incredible outbound communication you good internal communication as well. let me give you an example. the establishment of iraqi security forces was one of the

most important things that we tried to do during the first year. and the press were rightly interested in our progress. they obsess over it. though of course they did not understand, report or seem interested in the complexities of transfer costs on the street and build an army and the security forces. but getting the facts from the different parts of the operation were so difficult that in fact, at one point, in one week the president was with the secretary of defense and another with all different numbers. you need to have consistency or damage or credibility. they also did not have a tight rein on their people in the military. i was shocked to learn that it was military, the military's policy that if a soldier got asked a question, from a member of the press that they could answer it. which proposed a very significant problem when you

see a field commander during an interview on t.v. in the office and they are giving incomplete information. young enlisted soldiers were a particular victim of the press loved to ask questions about, don't you ms. home? and don't you wish your back with your family? it was a pretty disgraceful type of tactic on the media but they wanted to get these young guys to see that they missed him. will of course they missed home. when the soldiers stopped missing home, and stopped complaining about conditions, you may have a problem on your hands. they are supposed to do that. nobody really wants to be in the desert. you know we go there and put ourselves out of a job. then of course you have the reports. that had long decided that there administration in military really had no credibility so they crafted the

story that they wanted often without regard to facts or the sources. organizations also compete for resources and ownership. and i'm sure he citizen organizations and businesses every day. we dealt with that jockeying for positions in iraq and it definitely impacted the ability to communicate about the war. having the credibility presses to be able to say i was there and i saw it with my own eyes. it was critical to being able to deliver the message back in the states.and it very rarely happens. in 2003, 2004 i worked on developing a national surrogate operation and a hometown media project that booked soldiers and civilians both here and those overseas on local television and radio stations around the country in smaller markets to try and get the message out about what they experienced about their commitment to the mission, what was actually going on. we even used a military

production detachment in the country to shoot footage of these folks doing their jobs. building a school, working together with a district advisory council can working on government issues. governance issues. or just out fighting the terrorists. we would package them up and send them off for distribution to television stations. the white house and department of defense could not figure out who would take ownership of the mechanics. nobody wanted to own it. what if the office of global communications, someone of the defense department?maybe someone in the office of public affairs is that this should be doing this. never could quite figure it out so the program failed. the program did not last very long. so the operational war was impacting our ability to articulate a better, fair, and aggressive mission about the progress in the first year. by the operational to be fair was also infesting the quality of the journalism. by the end of 2003, the press

corps in baghdad had pretty much been stripped. we always had a saying in the office that the one thing that all of the bags and reporters had in common was for the most part you never heard of any of them. they had stripped the baghdad leaving only a token present in the bureaus and those personnel then were told that they were not permitted to travel around the country. that meant that they set hotels and waited for the daily car bomb to go off. they sent a crew out, got there footage, looped the footage on the evening news or on 24 hour cable news and that became the story. that we started seeing and we started seeing that as early as the summer of 2003. then there was this larger war to shape perceptions. of course the warehouses overreliance on the issue as a justification for war ultimately hurt the credibility

with the press and with the public from the start. but you have to couple that with new resumes full of executives and editors that came from the vietnam era and the sad part of human nature. i do not have this is developed because of their information systems, because of our technology but the sad part of human nature that it's always going to be more interesting and what went wrong and what went right. and who died as opposed to who lived and achieved.and then you see how these battle lines come into specific relief pretty quickly. we were dealing with the media that simply did not believe anything that we said. it was hostile to the president and would report rumors on the street over the government's explanation for virtually anything.to make matters worse, there were no senior staff members from the white house or the department of defense public affairs operations that spent any

appreciable amount of time in baghdad while i was there. that is public opinion that soured the strategy and it was to limit the number of people talking about the mission rather than expanding the universe. i think it is a very important lesson that we can take into the private sector and we can take into whatever fight we happen to be fighting for the different causes and organizations today that when the going gets tough recoiling back is not necessary the answer to the problem. you want to find ways to push through the filter. of course, lost in this complex set of relationships, in this war within a war within a war was the members of coalition together with our men and women in uniform, that is what they did in the first 18 months for a functioning pluralistic government albeit adolescent, albeit in its infancy, a

written and ratified transitional administrative war. a war for free lessons. establish a new political parties. the reopening of the central bank. stabilizing unified currency. the introduction of a vastly improved healthcare system probably, use that in washington today. a framework for the return of a strong judiciary. we established diplomatic relations with countries that used to be enemies. growing a new economy, it the training of a new iraqi security force that began within weeks of creation of the cpa. hundreds of schools and government buildings because including hospitals and healthcare centers. by the time president bush left office the most liberal constitution in the middle east have been developed with all of the table. they had an incredibly challenging security

environment that saw participation by more than a million people. the economy of iraq increased several times over from his time under saddam hussein. per capita income and increase between four and six times. life expectancy had increased. and security forces, much of a surprise i'm sure many people in this country had actually secured much of iraq. with ongoing assistance of course from the united states. perhaps most important, al qaeda in iraq by 2008 or the beginning of 2009 had been decimated.our failure to win the home front communications for today still impels them as opposed to any other mistake. the erosion of support in the face of almost exclusively bad news and is still discharging from the white house to communicate about the war meant that it became politically unattainable for the president politically and convenient for

president obama. that inconvenience unfortunately extended to have the obama administration dealt with isis. to the detriment of no more than a dozen countries that are dealing with isis across the greater middle east and africa. information is power. and perceptions created by the affected information become reality. those are inextricably linked to our ability to implement policy particularly when that policy will require significant time, significant resources and costs. our nation needs a new focus on public diplomacy and citizen education about policy. and that will be critical toward pushing back against filters on the right and on the left. intellectually dishonest reporting, safe news and uninformed opinions to ensure that what we do -- the lessons learned from our experience in iraq are critical to ensuring that as a nation we will

maintain the will to engage around the world. not just militarily but diplomatically and economically as well. using all of the great tools that this country has at his disposal. to exert its influence and values. when america engages, we see greater freedom, greater security, better human health. when we invest the tolerance. it was an honor to sir along those in uniform come along so many iraqis that made the ultimate sacrifice as well. and of course, the civilians have continued to be unsung heroes. and in a cause that at its core had the most noble intention of giving people the ability to determine their own destiny. i thank you for your support of this book, of this important

message and i'm happy to take your questions. thank you very much. [applause] members if you're: please wait for the microphone before you have your question and then proceed from there. >> we are ready. ma'am? >> hello, kathy -- i noticed on the front cover of your book because i just received it and i am very very much looking forward to reading it. it is a very important topic right now and so many different ways to thank you for being here. >> thank you.

>> on the cover of the book i think you have donald rumsfeld. this might be a simple aspect of it but i remember when the workforce began, donald rumsfeld said this war is going to take a very very long time. and this war is going to cost a lot of money. >> right. >> with the media said from that because he was admitting that it is an unknown. we do not know. we need to go ahead and invest the time and money. but what the media constantly repeated was, the administration does not know how much it is going to cost. the administration does not know how long this is going to take. i mean it was such a distortion. is this a simple version of some of the difficulty that we

experience? >> i always use the president's speech on the aircraft carrier at the end of major combat operations. as you all know now what was the famous part of that speech? actually it was not in the speech. it was a banner. it was in the photos. remember that bush understood this. he got it. he said if you're going to struggle against radical islamic extremism we have to adjust the freedom deposition middle east. and in order for you to do that it is a generation long type of struggle. it is not clean, does not happen right away and it is something that he believed was worth investing. did they know how much it was going to cost ultimately?no, of course not!but everybody was very clear from the beginning that this was going to be a long fight. and the media loves to

conveniently ignore the essay that bush and rumsfeld duped everyone. it was going to be like 1991 and it was going to be over in a few months. one of the things that after the mission accomplished speech, we started getting in the office was a loud report is quite up and they would say, so tom, why is it taking so long to build the military? mind you, this is august 2003. we did not take any prisoners. the military collapsed.and we had to basically, the iraq is had a poorly trained, poorly funded armor that had no officer corps. because a completely dissipated. but by august they were saying why is it taking so long to get the judiciary up and running? why is it taking so long to get the sewage system fixed in

baghdad? why is it taking so long to get the lights back on? there is this sense of impatience that was generated. and you are laughing. i'm assuming because this is how ridiculous it was and what i would say to the reporter is okay look, take us out of baghdad. take us out of baghdad and put us in columbus ohio. how long would it take you to build a power plant in columbus ohio? under the best circumstances imaginable? what, five years? on the low end. we are in new york city now. there are projects that you invest in that you have developers that are investing in that started investing in them 10 years ago and they're still not done. but according to the mainstream press, we were supposed of everything finished and that is what they wanted to try, the narrative that they wanted to try and drive and they did very

successfully. the white house for its part after what happened with the mission accomplished banner, really needed to redouble its efforts to try to explain to people in every way that it could that this was going to be, this was going to be messy, long and look -- did they effectively anticipate the rise of al qaeda in iraq and foreign fighters and insurgency? perhaps not. did they know how decrepit the country was only got there? probably not. we said let's tell us invade a country like belgium. beautiful, we got away about all of this stuff. but you know, that level of, the level of unknowns were very significant and of course i do believe that we made a mistake by not having as many troops as

we needed to. the civilian leadership during that first year was very adamant that we needed more troops. in this is sort of the world within the war. it is the civilian and military leadership that cross purposes on strategy. another question? >> i just have a question relative to something that was discussed or if you have an opinion. early on in the war, they seem to be taking the army and caving in place and working with tribal leaders with the good old yankee dollar. we had not seen the looting, we had not seen the breakout. when state sends over mr. breaks that the army is in like

everything went to hell and the situation worsened relative to the decisions made and state and not at defense. you have any comment relative to that? :>> i have a, i do have a comment and i think this is one of things we will debate for a very long time. the fact of the matter is that in the first gulf war, and i do not have a number for me but we took an enormous number of iraqi. we have an enormous amount of iraqi pows. we were rolling through and we were taking you know, whole battalions of iraqi soldiers. that did not happen this time around. and after the looting was allowed to happen, he did not have any place. you do not have any mechanism to pay them. you do not have, you cannot find people. you have no officer corps. the entire top echelon of the

army, saddam hussein had 300 generals and they were all basically you know what political. all of those folks went away. you cannot run an army with just infantrymen. particularly conscripts. so what happened was in addition obviously did not have any place, you had no resources. in order to train them, in order to equip them. it was all gone. and what we did, what bremmer did within the first two months really, that he was there was to graduate the first the timing of the new iraqi army. so the process of rebuilding the military and ultimately most of the people that were part or subject to this under the rank of colonel all were able to come back and folks

that were part of the iraq, iraqi civil service because you had to be a member in order to have a job. most of those people were ultimately rehired and i'm not talking about a year or two years later. the process moved quickly to evaluate these folks. and put them back in and we have functioning agencies and partners of the iraqi government and functioning - invented within you know within four months. after the fall of the statute. so the process did move fairly quickly and that is something that people never really realized. the other problem that we had in baghdad of course was he did not have police officers. so when we went into iraq, the

police departments in baghdad, the bank of police department collapsed. we had to be recruit people and then retrain folks in a very short period of time. so while we were trying to do the military end of it we also have to do the security, the civilian security services as well. and we were putting you know we are putting thousands of cops on the street by september or october. and taking some of the burden off of our soldiers who you know did not need to be cops and into guard hunting and killing terrorists.so i think there is a lot of misinformation about both. what is commonly referred to as the disbanding of the iraqi military but i want to see you cannot disband something that didn't exist in the first place by the time we got to it. other questions?

>> did the administration fully understand the tensions between the citizens in iraq before they made the decision to go in? >> you know, that is one of the things that we had to deal with as we were bringing. expatriates were coming in to try and help with the negotiating process. i cannot speak to the decision of these process before him. only what happened when i was there. the governing council which was a diverse group of men and women that were brought together to work with the coalition in july. so the statute fell in april, there was a period where jim garner was there and they were

trying to put together some kind of reconstruction effort. you had looting and then once bremmer got into country they immediately started working on governance issues. at a much greater speed and they were able to put together the governing council. and they were obvious disagreements. but you know we have we have some very experienced diplomats that were working to try and bring these different fractions together. to help create the transitional administrative law and ultimately the constitution that governed the elections. the sectarian issues that exist in iraq have existed for centuries. and they only got worse after the british came in and basically carved up the middle east. a lot of people do not realize that the map was drawn by a foreign power that came in and so there is to one degree or another, sort of an unnatural

union to all of this. but the one thing that brought everybody together was the fact that there were oil resources. how do you divide up those oil resources? that is something that we are dealing with today. there is a discussion about iraqi splitting off with a -- that is obviously the idea of how who gets what oil field and what amount of revenue? and you know what form they would take in a devoted iraq as opposed to a united iraq. i think that when it comes to sectarian issues, i think it's hard for us to understand. the iraqis and anybody in the middle east. this is one of the reasons why when we talked about islamic extremism, there is a sense of history and the middle east. that they have very long

memories and they look very far into the future about how to take their society. and i once sat with the gentleman who ultimately became the chief justice. we were in this bombed out building and we were getting ready to reappoint some justices to the iraqi supreme court who had been thrown off the bench. they were almost executed but he did not execute them. he threw them off the bench because he basically wants to dictate to them what the ruling should be under a case. that impending his son. these men that werein their 70s they were all, they came together and i was talking to this gentleman and i said you know there's a lot of work to be done. to rebuild the judiciary here. remember the regular writing laws longhorn the perfection of

the mechanical clock. they were the original lawyers. and you look across the table through thick glasses and he said to me, he knew i was a lawyer also. he said, we have been here before. and it was very striking because he wasn't talking about the pre-saddam era. he was reaching back to this great history that they had. this great legal history that they had. and there is a sense of confidence in his voice. because he was looking at the future with this wonderful foundation of their past. as painful as in many respects it can be and that is the way that these folks approach their relationships. now in some respects, it can be a very good thing. because it gave them stamina. you know the media loved to

talk about you know they love to suggest that not only were americans losing confidence in the iraq mission but the iraqis really did not want us there. to begin with. not wanting your country to be occupied is very different than not understanding the need for having troops there and not having a vision for what the country could be. i had a conversation, i got to know that deputy mayor of khuram shazad -- the deputy mayor of baghdad. i said how was your trip? and he said i am so angry.and as it is he angry with us? angry with me? is that i'm not angry with you. i am angry with us. i am angry with this idea that we allowed this. i have seen the world now! i've been to europe and i see

what other countries in the middle east and made of themselves and i am angry at us for allowing this to go on for so long. and that sentiment pervaded the iraqis i dealt with the sunni, the shieh and one of the things to remember out iraq, iraq was not a dry country. iraq was a very liberal country where they had separation between mosque and state. they had intermarriage of the different sects of islam. you can be living next door, you could be shieh in living next to a sunni. the saddam hussein foreign minister was a christian. so the idea of this overtaking of sectarianism is something that is always been present but

has been amplified i think by the influence of outsiders like iran and has been influenced by outsiders like those that from al qaeda and other terrorist organizations. and other radicals because iraq was not a radical country in that respect. saddam hussein started acting that way and so the religion after the 19 one gulf war because he wanted to be more relevant within the world of islam. he wants to be able to attract more of those folks so that he could then use them to increase his sphere of influence. other questions? >> hi tom. understanding the media reality

they're the most, how reliable would you say that the us is as a partner today. how much of a hit and credibility did we take but again, prematurely working away from a mission? i'm thinking about syria today. how bad is that. how much did the insurgency and everything if you weigh this up because of the skittishness of the public and reliability of the news media to paint that picture? >> that is a great question. and because of this gentleman is question two. what i'm saying about their very long view. which some people may say look, you know maybe that is one of the reasons why this wasn't going to work. because as a country were not necessarily going to have the stamina to do this for the long haul. but it certainly did hurt our credibility. when you tell your enemy when

you're leaving, they just wait. and then when you not only tell them when you are leaving but then when the general tells a commander-in-chief look, if you want to get out we are going to do we tell us to do. but we really need 30,000 troops to stay. in the commander-in-chief turns around he says no, we are going to give you 10. and the national security advisor goes on national television says the guys from isis, please, do not worry about it.they are the jv team. over the last eight years of the obama administration we sent every single solitary wrong message that we could have sent to the people that we were fighting and we were trying to help and were lying in wait to exert their influence around the world. and we are now seeing you in a book, we have no the europeans

are focused more climate change and they are about securing their own citizens. at some point you know we have, we got it together. we have an administration that is at least talking on terrorism. and you know time will tell how the thump administration of building. ultimately cells it to the public as well. and that is what we are talking about here.cannot not just having an idea. talk about being able to sell it in such a way that you can sustain the policy. but if you know, the myth that we left malik -- i have to find a new friend. where did he go? iran and russia. and both the russians and the iranians of exerted an enormous amount of influence now in the middle east.

and will have virtually no gentle with this is the consequence of people believing that the war was a fools errand. this is a consequence of folks not appreciating what we do there. what we did that we failed to communicate effectively here. so it is you know when someone at the white house says to me look, we want people thinking about the economy and jobs and the election going on. i said you do not have the choice anymore to try and forget that i run is going on. you have to push back. and if you do not push back and you to knock around the editorial, american just like those in this room that a

reasonable who might agree with certain points, disagree with certain points but who can even, can be reasoned with about the cost and benefits of a particular strategy. if you are unwilling to do that than ultimately gina who is making your foreign-policy? cnn. or on the other hand maybe fox news. or someone said that no one has ever heard of that suddenly appears in all your facebook feeds. so we do have to educate ourselves. and we do have to make sure that this is the challenge of our information age. it comes with a responsibility. and it is really important that we take businesses from iraq. and we internalize them and we talk. we talk in real terms about what actually happened so that

we can learn. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> tom, on behalf of mike sullivan that cannot be here tonight i would like to present you with the union league club medallion is a sign of things becoming joining us on this afternoon and evening. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> also on behalf of the military affairs committee

i would like to present you with our military affairs challenge coin. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. >> i think everyone of you for attending today but it would not be a military affairs event without continued funds for our next event. so here is the paying the bills so to speak your skydiving on august 18. we have a bunch of skydivers in the audience wearing their wings, way to go. i see people looking at their feet not trying to make eye contact right now. but that is okay. join us for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane that day and you will get bragging rights at the main bar downstairs. on september 11 a special day, a special day for the world in our city especially.

we are going to have a very special guest arming the tenant general can general commanding officer of the armies all special forces and the units that are really taking to the enemies at this point and on the war in therapy that we september 11. and after that we have another special guest in a different type of plane. we have the command of the -- four-star general j remedy would talk to us about stuff that we usually do not talk about which is including plans on how that they are getting to mars. and when i say that, we had that conversation down in florida when i was there and he looked at me seriously. he is a very humorous guy but looked at me seriously and said, is really is rocket science. and we're going to get it done. so he will go over the plans for a trip to mars which are in

its infancy but should be very interesting. we do not always talk about mars here. please clear your calendars for those days and join us but again that concludes tonight's program. thank you for coming to the program on july 9 and the main bar is open downstairs. thank you. [applause][inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv

recently visited capital health asked members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> i just finished a book by nathan hill. excellent novel especially for a first novel. really talented writer. and it takes place in many different words but i thoroughly enjoyed it. i really liked reading that. but on my list now is some that are not novels. i have somebody with a little hammer which is a compilation of essays by -- i really enjoyed the mayor which is a novel that she wrote. i read that last year. the compilation of essays i am looking forward to. my beloved world, sonia sotomayor book. i'm ready to read that. i care a lot about the supreme court and then also i just picked up hunger by roxanne -- that is my short list. for summer reading. it is a real mix of things but i am looking forward to devouring those and maybe going back invading part of it again.

>> booktv wants know your reading. send us your summer reading list via twitter at booktv or instagrammed at book understory tv.or posted to our facebook facebook.com/booktv booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> chief david brown, what was the day like july 7, 2016, how did it start? >> started as a normal day in the chaotic world where you had scheduled protesters who had planned as part of a national protest day for a very large static protest event whether it would be at a park in the downtown. it is not unusual today. we had planned for it to be something that we would manage peacefully.