and northeastern university president discusses the need for continuous education to keep up with changing technology. that is all this weekend on c-span to book tv. television for serious readers. now we kick off the weekend with tom vasili. he talks about his efforts chicken to mid desperate to community kate the strategy. [inaudible] members and guests i have the honor of introducing a friend and academic colleague who also happens to be a best-selling author speaker, commentator and senior level management strategist. he has worked with the presidents and popes.

for more than 20 years our speaker has provided strategic and crisis communications counsel to companies, policy organizations and government agencies not for profits advocacy campaigns and grassroots groups. the advisor to the u.s. achieve a protocol at the vatican. the planner for the department of state visits of former presidents bush and clinton to the tsunami ravaged south asia. a charter member of the board of advisors at the liberal arts and scientists. and the host of sunday in america.

for seven months in 2004 he served as a senior press advisor to the coalition for visual authority in iraq where he earned a department of defense joint civil service combination. his experiences and perspectives gained during the seven months form the basis of his book. fighting the media war in iraq. please help me give a warm welcome to the best-selling author. [applause]. thank you very much. i really appreciate the warm introduction and this is a wonderful turnout and i'm honored to be here with all of you given it a stay of new york city's subways and trains. we've a great room and again it is a great privilege ron is

a pretty quiet guy. very modest, but for those of you that don't know he has tackled some of the most complex the security challenges facing the city of new york during his career particularly after september 11 and he is a great public servant and someone truly committed to keeping the city safe. so thank you ron, for everything that you do. [applause]. i would just like to take a minute if all of our veterans and those who served in the unites states armed forces would just stand and be recognized. [applause]. thank you very much for the service to the country. i'd be remiss at this point if i did not also think ambassador john bolton who

offered 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 a wonderful institution the union league club of new york. fifteen presidents had been members of this institution since the founding in 1863. they had played an important role on a wide range of issues in as rob mentioned and get rid of some things along the way. as a great privilege to be here. and it's very that we are in this historic room to talk about this. fighting the media war in iraq because this book is about history. how we make history and how the history is shaped in perceived not only by ordinary people but by people have the

great fortune of being thrust into extraordinary circumstances. on behalf of our country. but also increasingly the business of journalism. it was shaped by all those things at a time in history when you're seen several profound shifts. the most common question that i get is why do you write it. first, the shifts that i mentioned in the government's ability to counter them. the great work of thousands of americans that went over to iraq who sacrificed much and took great risk to help create

a better future for that country they have all been lost to history. manage their message and counter the editorial filter. they will soon find themselves able to execute that policy. in my opinion that opinion is america and the rest of the world at great risk. certainly what was lost in the coverage was the very best of people. the real story about what happened with that critical first year 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.

over the last number of years i had watched as a coalition provisional authority has been land best. and the politicians on both sides of the aisle in my view very unfairly. the civilian story in that first year my perspective as a civilian bush appointee being thrust into the middle of the fight for the piece. as well as the work of so many hundreds of my colleagues on a range of issues. i felt needed to be told at this time. they aren't the only folks with the iraq mission. they played key roles often left unseen. their boat camp was a better front.

their uniform in their convictions. and it's my hope that by evaluating the successes and the failures of the iraq mission history would record the unbending purpose of many a coalition civilian as a triumph of american spirit and sacrifice. it is chronological and it's very personal. it tells the story from the day i got my phone call and then ten days later to go into baghdad for some indeterminate amount of time. i would only be gone for about four months to convince my family that this would be an okay thing to support. it is very personal and i thought about writing a straight policy book about public diplomacy how you communicate about war at the

age of 24 hour news. but it seemed too impersonal and cold. it almost seemed inappropriate given the work that was done. we were also personally and emotionally invested in what we were doing. in the environment was foreign too so many of us that not injecting a heavy dose of what it was like for me personally and going through that experience distant seem authentic. i wanted the book to be accessible to a broad range of audiences. i wanted to write it in such a way that it told a story i was very conversational. there are plenty of stories when you read the book a guy who has no training on ten days notice. no weapons training. trying to craft a message for middle eastern and western media about the works that thousands of americans were doing to re- build the

country. an increasingly dangerous environment. talk about the brightly clad curtis children. being told by a special force a member of our special forces to remember to roll down the car window before throwing out the grenade. the contractors dancing at the infamous disco. seen women draped in black at the mask raves. clutching the pictures and photos of their families. dealing with debt and rocket attacks. feeling a real fear and of course seen glimpses of hope. those were all part of the experience but embedded in the pages is also a running commentary and for the first

time the real analysis of not just the news media and it's not just a book that beats up on the news media. but the institutional and philosophical challenges that hampered the bush administration's ability to deliver a more balanced more realistic view of what was really going on in iraq against the demand of the business of journalism. the lessons about fighting the media war they were even more relevant today than they were back then. in the press at war with the president. the indisputable truth in all of this is that the government still has to make policy or communications change. the way that we talk to each other. the way that our influencers

try to influence policy it all changes. but at the end of the day the government still has to make that policy executed and sustain it and that requires public support. what we experience in iraq was an erosion of that support because of a failure to effectively fight and when the home front war and the press. policymaking is now more than ever about our willingness to push back our willingness to participate in that daily block and tackle on every medium not just twitter against the business of journalism and an increasing number of information sources of varying degrees of credibility. and when we do this analysis what we learn is that iraq was really a war within a war with

in a war. what we witnessed in the rise of al qaeda and the decision-making of the united states and the aftermath of september 11 it was a sharp departure from the usual warmaking paradigm. i believe we are still in many respects in a transitional phase as it relates to the way that this country handles both the military and diplomatic strategy to account for the shift. to have to deal with this paradigm shift. the challenges were philosophical and operational and compounded by this battle for audience mine chair at home. the tensions made the top cell even tougher. there was a philosophical war. debating whether or not we should have gone into iraq. the more relevant conversation for our country moving forward is once you make the decision to go to work what is the principle or the desired

outcome and how do you get there. you several choices in the case of iraq. you could remove saddam hussein and leaf leave which i believe would've been a false choice you grab some general and oppose them with absolute authority. basically treating one dictator for another. you attempt to secure the country and build institutions that can support a more participatory pluralistic intolerant governing structure. they tackled this extraordinary task with great passion and commitment sacrificing much with their efforts going unnoticed as a situation worsened do it to the rise of al qaeda in iraq. unfortunately a government

that is the mission went on often failed to aggressively defend its own policy. the issue of competing philosophies was apparent virtually every day. they have this vision of a high-tech smaller fleet footed military which is fine with that happened to be incompatible with the mission that we have at the time. dealing with lawlessness and leaders. my first date in iraq i got off the plane and i put on my helmet. i got in the bus and they said by the way the road between baghdad and the palace is closed because there had been too many ied attacks on it. i said great this is exactly what i want to see. it was not a particularly original particularly original name but it got the point

across that we have a problem even securing the road between the airport and where our headquarters was going to be. one of the first conversations i talk about this in the book was opposing the ominous but astute question how do we get the u.s. military to start shooting the leaders. because we needed to demonstrate that we were going to use force in order to ensure that the country would be secure. and to restore some sense of lawful behavior. you clearly have a physical philosophical differences. the foreign service officers while they clearly had their own important priorities often didn't play well in the sandbox with the folks from the department of defense. there was an operational or bureaucratic war as well. the challenges were immense.

a unique combination for the department of defense the department of state the nfc the white house and the cia. and intelligence agencies. all operating under our feet at all times. it was a textbook lesson in building and a very short amount of time in managing a bureaucracy. nobody alive had really done this before. and it impacted what impacted what i did for instance every day because part of being able to craft an outbound mitigation strategy requires for planning purposes you have good internal communication as well. the establishment of the security forces was one of the most important things that we try to do during the first year. in the press was rightly interested in our progress. they did not understand, report or seem interested in

the complexity of trying to put cops on the street and build an army. but getting the facts from the different parts of the operation was so difficult that in fact at one point in one week the president and secretary of defense was all going on tv using different numbers. you have to head message consistency or you damage your credibility. the military didn't have a tight rein on the people. i was shocked when day to learn that it was military it was the military's policy if the soldier got ask a question they can answer it. when you see a field a commander doing an interview on tv in your office and their giving incomplete information. young and listed enlisted soldiers were a particular

victim of the press who love to ask questions about that. it was a disgraceful type of tactic on the media. they wanted to get these young guys is a they miss home. when the soldier stops missing home and stops complaining about conditions you may have a problem on your hands. they're supposed to do that. we were there to put ourselves out of the job. then of course you have the reports who had long decided that the administration and the military it really had no credibility. as of the craft of the wanted often without regard to the facts or the sources. organizations also compete for resources in ownership and i'm sure you see this in your organizations and in your businesses every day we dealt

with that jockeyed for position in iraq. it definitely impacted our community development. having the credibility to be able to say i was there and i saw it with my own eyes was critical to be being able to deliver the message back in the states. very rarely happen. i worked on developing a natural -- national surrogate operation. it booked soldiers and civilians both here in those overseas on the local television and radio stations around the country and smaller markets to try to get the message out about what they experience about their commitment to the mission what was actually going on. we even used the military production detachment in country to shoot footed -- footage of these folks. working together with the district and speiser council.

or just out fighting the terrorists. we would package them up and we would send them off. the white house and department of defense cut it figure out who would take ownership of the mechanics. nobody want to own it. nobody could quite figure it out. so the program failed. the operational war was impacting our ability to articulate a better, fairer more aggressive message about our progress during that first year. to be fair it was also impacting the quality of the journalism. by the end of 2003 the press corps in baghdad have pretty much been stripped. the one thing that all of the baghdad reporters heading comment was that for the most part you never heard of any of

them. they have stripped the bureaus leaving only a token presence in this bureaus and those personnel then were told they were not permitted to travel around the country. that means a set in hotels and waited for the daily car bomb to go off. they got their footage. that became the story. that we started seeing we started seeing as early as the summer of 2003. then there was a larger work to shape perceptions. the white house is over reliant. as a justification for war ultimately hurt our credibility. if the couple that with newsrooms of full of executives and editors who came from the vietnam era and

the sad part of human nature. i don't know if this is developed because of our information systems but the sad part of human nature and that is always going to be more interested in what went wrong and what went right and who died as opposed to who lived in achieved. and then you see how the battle lines coming to come into specific relief pretty quickly. we were dealing with the media that simply did not believe a thing that we set. it was hostile to the president and it would report rumors on the street over the government's explanation. there were no senior staff members from the white house or the department of defense that spent any amount time in baghdad while i was there. the administration's strategy was to limit the number of people talking about the mission rather than expanding that universe. it's a very important lesson

that we can take into the private sector. when the going gets tough recoiling back isn't necessarily the answer to the problem. that you want to find ways to push through the filter of course, lost in this complex set of relationships in the war within a war within a war was what they wanted in those first 18 months. a functioning pluralistic government. even in its infancy. a ratified traditional administrative law. a framework for free elections. the establishment of new political parties.

the introduction of a vastly improved health care system. a framework for the return of a strong judiciary. reestablish the diplomatic relations to begin within weeks of creation of the cpa. hundred of schools. rebuild. and by the time president butch -- bush left office relationships had to be at the table. to facilitate an election that incredibly challenging security environment that sought participation by more than a million people. the economy of iraq had increased several times over from the time under saddam hussein. life expectancy had increased insecurity forces much to the

surprise i'm sure many people in this country had actually secured much of iraq. with ongoing assistance. most important at the beginning of 2008 and nine had been decimated. our failure to win the home front communications were to this day still imperils iraq more than any mistake or misstep that occurred in the fall of war. it was politically unattainable for president bush. and the inconvenience extended to the how the obama administration dealt with isis. information is power.

created by the effective use of information becomes reality. those are linked to our ability to implement policy particularly when that policy will require significant time, resources and costs. our nation needs a new focus on public diplomacy and that will be critical towards pushing back. both on the right and the left. fake news and uninformed opinions it would be contextualized for americans. the lessons learned from our experience in iraq our critical to ensuring that as a nation we will maintain the well to engage around the world not just militarily but diplomatically and economically as well. using all of the great the great tools that this country

has at its disposal to exert its influence and its values. when america engages we seek greater freedom and greater security. and we advance the tolerance that is underpinning a piece. it was an honor to serve along side so many brave americans in uniform. and of course the civilians who continue to meet unsung heroes and in the cause that at its core have the most noble intentions of giving people the ability to determine if their own destiny. i think you for your support of this book. i'm happy to take your questions. thank you very much. [applause].

this is been recorded so if you do have a question please wait for the microphone before you give your question and then proceed from there. please wait for the microphone before you give your question and then proceed from there. i noticed on the front cover of the book. i just received it. i was very much looking for to reading it. it's a very important topic right now and summoning different ways. thank you for being here. on the front cover of your book and to give donald's rumsfeld and this might be simple aspect of it but i remember when the war first began donald runs felt said this work is going to take a

very long time and this war is going to cost a lot of money. what the media said to that because they were admitting that it was an unknown. we need to go ahead and invest the time and the money. with the media constantly repeated was they don't know how much it can accost. it was such a distortion is this a simple version of some of the difficulties we experience. i always use the president's speech on the aircraft carrier at the end of major compound operations. you will know what was the

famous part of that speech. it was a banner. it was in the photos. if you read the speech. he understood this. he got it. if you get a struggle against radical islamic extremism if the address of the freedom deficit in the middle east. is a generation long type of struggle. is not clean, it doesn't happen right away and it's something that he believed was worth investing. everybody was very clear right from the beginning. that this is gonna be a long fight. and the media loves to conveniently ignore that and suggest to people that they duped everybody into thinking that we were to go in. it was can be over in a few months.

one of the things after the mission accomplished speech. we have a lot of reporters. why is it taking so long. to build the military. this is august of 2003. we didn't take any prisoners. the military collapsed me of the basically start with the conscript army that had no officer corps because it 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. there is a sense of impatience that was generated. how ridiculous it was.

what i would say to the reporter is take us out a 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 five years on the low end. there are projects that you invested that you had developers that were investing in. they are still not done. we were's wish was of any everything finished. the white house for its part after what have happened with the mission accomplished be in her really need to redouble its efforts to try to explain

to people in every way that could that this was going to be messy it was going to be long and look that they the effectively anticipate the rise about al qaeda we used to joke and say next time we invade a country let's invade a country that works like belgium. well we don't have to worry about half the stuff. the level of unknowns were very significant. i do believe 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 and this is the war within the war. the civilian leadership in the military leadership they cross

purposes on strategy. do we have another question is have a question relative to something that was discussed or if you have an opinion. early on in the war tommy frick seem to be keeping the army in place. in working with the tribal leaders and we have not seen the looting we have not seen the breakup. he breaks up the vastness army. it seems like everything went to hell in the situation worsened relative to the decisions made. if give any comment relative to that.

i do have a comment and i think that this is one of those things that we will do debate for a very long time. the fact of the matter is in the first gulf war and we don't have a number in front of me we took an enormous number of iraqi pows. we were rolling through and we were taking whole battalions soldiers that didn't happen the semi round. you do not had any place. or mechanism to pay them. you cannot find people. the entire top vessel echelon of the army. you cannot run an army with

just infantrymen. what happened in addition. in and have have a place to build it. no resources in order to train them in order to equip them and what we did within the first two months that he was there was a graduate the first battalion of the new iraqi army. the process of rebuilding that and multiple poor people that were part or subject to this under the rank of colonel were able to come back. and folks that were part of the civil service and a 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 jobs. with functioning agencies of the iraqi government and we have a functioning morality and baghdad. within four months. the process did move fairly quickly. the other problem that we have and baghdad of course was it you did not have a police officer. when we went into iraq the police department in the baghdad police department collapsed. we have to re- recruit people and then retrain folks in a very short time.

we also had to do the security services as well. and we were putting thousands of cops on the street by september or october and taking some of the burden off of our soldiers who did not need to be traffic cops. i think there is a lot of misinformation about both of those and what is commonly referred to as the disbanding of the iraqi military. i'm one that can't disband something that really didn't exist in the first place. do they fully understand the tensions between the sunnis in this year it's that is one of

these things that we have to deal with as they were bringing ex- patriots in. to try to help with it negotiation process. from the administration standpoint during the time of the coalition i can't speak to the decision-making process before hand i can speak to what happened when i was there. on the appointment of the governing council which was a diverse group of men and women who were brought together to work with the coalition in july so the statue fell in april. a time where jim garner was there. they immediately started working on issues. in a much greater speed and they were able to put together

this governing council. there were obvious disagreements. we have some very experienced diplomats that were working to try to bring these factions together to help create the transitional ministry of lot and ultimately the constitution. the secretary and issues that exist in iraq had existed for centuries. they only got worse after the british came in. a lot of people don't realize that the map was drawn by a foreign power that came in and so there is to 1 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 oral -- oil resources. there is a discussion about iraqi courtesy and splitting

off the big wick with all of that. is the idea of how do you who gets which oilfield and what amount of revenue and what form a divided iraq would take opposed to a united iraq. i think when it comes to secretary and issues i thing it's hard for us to understand them here. anybody in the middle east and this is one of the reasons why when we talk about islamic extremism there is a sense of history in the middle east and that they have very long memories and they look very far into the future about how to take their society i once sat with the gentleman who

ultimately became the chief justice. we were in the bombed out building and we were getting ready to reappoint the justices to the iraqi supreme court. they had been thrown off the bench. they were almost executed by saddam hussein. he basically wanted dictate to them. these men who were in their 70s i was talking to this gentleman and he said there's a lot of work to be done. to rebuild the judiciary here. they were the original lawyers. the thick glasses. and he knew i was a lawyer too. he said we had been here

before he wasn't talking about the pre- saddam era he was reaching back to this great history there was a sense of confidence in his voice. and that is a way that these folks. they love to suggest. that they really didn't want us there. to begin with.

not wanting ear 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 have a conversation and got to know him very well the deputy mayor of baghdad. he came back to me and he said how was your trip. i'm so angry. is he angry with me. he said i'm not angry with you i am angry with us. i am angry with this idea that we allowed this. i've seen the world now. i've been to europe now and i've seen what other countries in the middle east have made of themselves i'm angry at us for allowing this to go on for so long. and that sentiment pervaded the iraqis that i dealt with.

one of the things to remember iraq was a dry country. it was a very liberal country where they have separation between mosque and state. you could be living next door. you could be shiite and be living next door to a sunni. the idea that this overtaking of sectarianism is something that has always been present but has been amplified by the influence of outsiders like iran and has been influenced by that.

and other terrorist organizations. iraq was not a radical country. saddam hussein started acting that way and sort of found religion after the 1991 gulf war. he wanted to be able to attract more of those folks so that he could then use them to increase his fear of influence. understanding the immediate realities how reliable would you say that the u.s. is a partner to that. how much of a hit and credibility do we take by walking away from admission.

i think about syria today. how bad is it. with the skittishness of the public and the reliability of the news media. to paint a picture. it's a very good question. there very long view. some people may say look maybe that's one of the reasons why this wasn't in work because as a country we were not necessarily going to have the stamina to do this for the long haul. but it certainly did her our credibility. when you tell your enemy when you are leaving and then, when you not only tell them when you're leaving but the

generals tell the commander-in-chief you look you want to get out. were going to do what we tell us to do. we really need 30,000 troops to stay. and the commander-in-chief runs around and said we are to give you ten. they said over the last eight years during the obama administration we sent every single solitary wrong message that we could have sent to the people that when we were fighting to we were trying to help in three who are lying in wait. and we are now seen. with the soft underbelly. at some point we got it together. we have an administration that is talking tough on terrorism

on time will tell of the trump administration on a medically deals with these threats. we are talking about being able to sell it in such a way that you can sustain the policy. in the minute we left had to find a new friend. he went to iran and he went to russia. they have exerted and an enormous amount of influence now in the middle east and we have virtually no presence. this is the consequence that they were a fools errand.

what we actually accomplished there. that litany of things that i was talking about that we did that we failed to communicate effectively here. when someone at the white house sesame we want people thinking about the economy and the jobs in the presidential election going on i said you don't have the choice anymore to try to forget that iraq is going on. if you don't push back and you don't go around new york and washington to americans just like the people that are in this room. who are reasonable and might agree with certain points. can be reasoned with about the

cost in the benefits of a particular strategy. if you are unwilling to do that. then ultimately we do have to educate ourselves this is a challenge of the information age. and comes comes with the responsibility it's really important that we take these lessons from iraq. and we internalize them. we talk in real terms about what actually happened so that we can learn. incorporation you very much. [applause].

thank you. mike sullivan who can be here tonight. and also on behalf of the military affairs committee. i would like to present you with our military affairs challenge coin.

it would not be a military affairs event without plugs from the next event. i had people looking at their feet not trying to make eye contact right now. join us. earn your math jump wings. that will give you bragging rights at the main bar downstairs. on september 11 a special day for the world but a special day for our city especially. we are to have can have a very special guest. the commanding officer of all of these special forces. they are the units that are really taking it to the enemy at this point.

and after that we have another special guest. the four-star general. j raymond. they're gonna talk to us about stuff we don't usually talk about. which includes. when i say that. they have that conversation down. this really isn't rocket science. and were going to get done. so they will go over the plans for the trip to mars. it should be very interesting. we don't always talk about it here. please clear your calendars for those dates.

[applause]. [inaudible] this weekend on book tv. hillary clinton gives her personal account. with the book what happened. it really hit me that there were there very important

issues that need to be discussed abated even that our democracy and country relied on that kind of self-examination and i thought i need to know what happened and i needed to be as honest, candid and open as i possibly can in order to figure it out for myself and may be doing it in a book would provide the discipline and the deadline to try to think it through. .. ..

the assumption or the belief that these dictators use political power wisely and benevolently, that they will be kind, they bridged the gap between. practice. >> for more of the weekend schedule go to booktv.org. here is a look at some of the books being published this week.

>> look at these titles in bookstores this week, watch for many of the authors in the future on c-span2. [applause]