we think of this is the center of the united states. [laughter]. fully appreciate your coming all the way from washington or from beirut to here. thank you. kim: thank you so much for having me it is such a pleasure to be here. [applause]. [background sounds]. weeknights this week, we are featuring tv programs showcasing what is available every weekend on "c-span2". tonight, books on the middle east, first michael rubin and brian, they talk about the instability student instability in the middle east. and against iran may lead and then kim, talks about the decades long rivalry between iran and saudi arabia. after that, cory a retired career foreign service officer, who served in the middle east

for 25 years, talks about u.s. policy in the region and the recent confrontation between the u.s. and iran. much want to beat this weekend every weekend, on "c-span2". host: please welcome doctor cory lee. [applause]. hello there guess who i am i'm cory and this is kevin. and i have to give you an introduction about this person, we know to get you out of the hole that you have been living in for a while. this is tara westover. this is the 100 consecutive week on the new york times bestseller list present number one.

[applause]. ahead of michelle something, malcolm, i dunno, down there. [laughter]. that is very cool. i'm assuming that a lot of people are familiar with the narrative that and that is why you're so interested in you are still here on the last lecture on the second day. but we can still go through some of the heard stories because it is so gripping. in starts in idaho and actually, to me it is like such a beautiful setting. there must be a lot of beautiful memories that you have of that. tara: yes, very beautiful mountains that i lived on and i still have very fond memories thing on that mountain and playing on that mountain. i think it's incredible, if either gets kids get deflated playground, we had this higher huge space and a lot of

wonderful space that could happen. imagine like that i guess you two were the original free range kids. [laughter]. kind of hard-core. there's a lot of wonderful things about it and of course there was difficult things to with the setting, the scenery and living. host: nature walks. tara: is just there constantly want there. and when i went back from college night would be driving to town with my sister and i would just be rapture as how much wonderful every thing was. and she is like what is up with you. as a field. here's another field. right there i can take a picture of this. she would roll her eyes. dr. khoi le: your mother was an herbalist. tara: yes, she was that herbalist in the midwest. we grew a lot of food that we ate and we had animals that we raised and we went from pasture

to pasture. it was pretty. and we were very involved with the land. dr. khoi le: lots of land and normal animals. tara: must think normal ones, we had goats and pigs. dr. khoi le: normal animals like a poodle. [laughter]. tara: we never had a poodle. [laughter]. now. that never happened. you know normal farm animals i guess. horses cows pigs chickens. we had a lot of goats. we are good people. [laughter]. yet, when i think of as normal animals. dr. khoi le: and you are the youngest of seven. so there are a lot of people around. tara: yes. we did not go to school so if my parents were, the kind of a different a lot less of it. so they were opposed to a lot of things like doctors and hospitals and they would not have like you. dr. khoi le: window the first week though.

tara: they cut a little bit more radical of she got older and my first three siblings went to school. dr. khoi le: they were born and hospitals pretty. tara: they were born in hospitals. in my dad got a little bit more radical as he got older. we he pulled the kids out of school. and after that, my third brother, started and everyone was born at home in my fourth brother after that, no birth certificates or anything like that. dr. khoi le: no medical records or nothing. tara: no, i got my birth certificate when i was nine. dr. khoi le: you are lucky did not end up like me. tara: it probably would have been called partner. dr. khoi le: documentation. [laughter]. lucky for many of you, you don't look like me. [laughter]. will leave that one for now. but, you are still reading. i think it was like run reference to the carnegie library. tara: , there was a library in town,

the con carnegie library. reading was important. we are all taught henry by an older brother. about how fast i could learn how to read a fairly when my brothers thought i was dumb. and thought that it could not read. dr. khoi le: this was that at age four. tara: yes, i think it was for. so we can all read. it was important to my parents that you could read, you can read the bible in the book of mormons. very religious. so reading was very important. and the rest of education was a little bit more piecemeal. a little bit more haphazard. in some years, my mother would say we would get raise and that would last a couple of weeks and tend to give away to the demands of our herbal business or the farm for my parents were very devoted to food supplies and they were very anxious that they have a tenure supply of food to prepare for whatever catastrophe was going to come at the end of

time. we just probably not something you want talk about pretty. dr. khoi le: and then you have to be able to protect the food. tara: yes you do pretty so it gets to be kind of involved. that kind of planning yes. dr. khoi le: in ten years of food printed speech of that is a lot of food. it's not like a little bit of food. dr. khoi le: yes of course, nine people. so you mentioned that your father evolved in his way of thinking that he kind of come more kind of french. was it during an event that changed the way that he was viewing the world. or was it just the progression of it. it. tara: it's to say. definitely events that seem to play into an intense to intensify it and i write about that ruby ridge which is what i remember and that hit my family and a pretty specific way. and i think for my dad for many years before that, had already pretty frightened of the federal

government and was already developing already pretty radical ideas around government and school and doctors and things like that. i think ruby ridge for him really solidified that. it is a story of the federal government surrounding a family and essentially siege of the family and killing several members of the family. dr. khoi le: and they were not too far from your pretty. tara: they were in idaho and homeschoolers like my family. something for my dad, that really solidified in his mind, a lot of the fears and things that he was worried about. so i think that had a pretty intense effect. i don't think anybody ever wants to act like the ruby ridge incident. but after that, nobody went to any school. dr. khoi le: for somehow tyler, is the third oldest? and did he where he felt the need to break free of that environment pretty.

tara: he was really an unusual person. he went to one year of high school and then refresh happened and he did not go back. he was just kind of a freak. in a good way. but he went to one year of high school and he liked it. he liked math, he taught himself trigonometry. they taught himself algebra. and then he decided he would teach himself calculus. he did not have book so he went in high school and said, will you give me a calculus book. in the teacher just laughed. you can't teach yourself calculus. and he said give me a book. i really think i can. in some given the book he taught himself calculus. and then one day, just to gaze 18 i he got almost a perfect score. and then just announced he was going to college. i didn't even know what that was. i think i was probably eight years old. and as far as i knew, college was an evil terrible thing that so my said. he just kind left.

dr. khoi le: the book is actually dedicated to tyler. and you credit him with also introducing you to music. and you i think, and said that was one of the main sources of inspiration for you to leave home. and see something greater outside of your world. tara: i was pretty happy with the mountain. growing up in the mountains kind of wonderful. i very much subscribe to my world others will be a pretty make sense to me when your told things that make sense to you and so i, something is clicking back you're sorry. so i very much subscribe to my dad in the way of looking through the world and i had no intention of ever leaving the mountain. it worked fine for me. and then tyler played for me some opera. in some of the mormon tabernacle choir and i was just really rusted by it. i don't know what this is, but one thing is that no one is born

listening to something like this pretty have to go somewhere and they you how to do this. and so he said to tyler, where would you go to learn this pretty decent of you go to college. and i sort of said fine, i will do that. so i ended up, and i get to college. how do you teach yourself math. [laughter]. said that hard, don't worry. [laughter]. is our target. it was like acting is a weird doing normal things. and i did not teach myself calculus. i barely managed to teach myself and it's algebra to do that exam. i started to we can really learn algebra. it is still true that marlis taught myself algebra because like to sing. that was a motivation for me. i don't know for sure what kind of lesson there is now except that i think maybe we should be a little bottle before we crush any kind of action the child has

because you just don't know when that will take them. because i like to sing, then i went to college and i got to college, discovered philosophy and history and all of those wonderful things. i love cambridge, and discovered writing in books and wrote books. then it came to this great place here. [laughter]. so you just don't necessarily know where things will take you. i think if you don't, you know the passion is going to take you but you having no passion will take you nowhere. dr. khoi le: in the chapter called apache women. our patchy chair. tara: i think it is a patchy chair, i haven't read it in quite a while. dr. khoi le: is really good, i would recommend it. tara: i heard it's good. dr. khoi le: you made this decision at 15 or 16, being modest the you taught

yourself and you got score in the eventually they got to into byu and you are pretty sent and disciplined. you haven't read recently but when her father he comes into your room at night and he says, tara, i have prayed to the lord about your decision and is called me to testify. he is displeased that you are casting away his blessings to board after man's knowledge. that is raffle come upon you. so in the book is been the night thinking about this and that your father comes and it was pretty chilling. and you wake up the next day you decided not to go. let's go to college credits betook i very much it subscribed to my dad's worldview pretty i think mostly is subscribed to it printed in a dead end up going to college for all kinds of

reasons but even once i did go, i think i still have believed should not go that there's something kind of weird about the fact that i was going. my dad very much have doctrine that we are taught that we are particular people with my family what and that week from the old testament because we do not for dismayed and all of these things that other people did. doctors and public schools was a big part of that. so for me to go to college was a huge breach of that and i was just thinking that for a long time and it felt like a failing of personal family that did not have enough faith or conviction to just stick out with his life that i had been told was the right way. it did not feel like the right life for me. i think when you're a kid, i guess i was 17 but i did know how to reconcile those two things. i had something to my for parents, kind of a loyalty to them and their way of life and beliefs. i felt like of them that and i

also felt like out something to myself, i should explore this. i love to sing and i want to see when i am able to do. i could not reconcile those two obligations. dr. khoi le: your mother's world role in this, she kind of encourages you. you need to go is what she told you. and then at other times it seems like she's holding back from that. tara: mother is really complicated. i always think about kind of two versions of her. my mother i think it was mother and there's my father's wife. and they are just not the same person. my mother is a really different person when my dad's eye of the there or is acting on his behalf. she just very different person.

i feel like when i was younger there is more of her as my mother and as i got older, felt like that person was less and less present. dr. khoi le: so it was unpredictable of which mother was there so you go to college and you're finding out that all of these things, that your knowledge is really different from that of your classmates. and so that is like when you have a social obstacle. even though in retrospect, you might think of it as being a little transition. tara: it seems to me like a shockingly party world school. but now, this is a lot more about me than it does not byu. because it is more or less the mormon convent. [laughter]. more or less pretty like men and women live in different

buildings there's a curfew that is 12:00 o'clock at night and if you visit a guy's apartment, you can only be in the living room. you cannot know to the bathroom. it is a serious serious thing. i thought it was terrifying evil thing and you can wear are they work date treating mountain dew and wearing tank tops and i thought it was evil. i cannot deal with it. i thought i was surrounded by gentiles. that was the word i used. dr. khoi le: a lot of focus on the academic obstacles that you have to overcome learning about all of these things, and not the way you have been touched. in the social ones also, the financial obstacle. you are really broke the first year. tara: likely was not expensive. because the church subsidized a lot of it. so you can actually scrape

through. think tuition at the time on what was $1600 or something. it's unbelievable for the kind of education it is. in my rent, i will never fit was hundred and $10 a month. you could work a couple of jobs and work in the summer and you do that and the only problem with me that way is that you would be constantly and endlessly preoccupied with money. you can woke me up at 3:00 o'clock in the morning and shook me awake and asked me how much money was in your bank account and i could tell you how much was in there. like $26.50. and who i had what and when what rent was due and i knew all of that. and that takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth for a lack of a better term. everything is think about focusing on every date was money. and then the best thing happened to me that probably should happen to me, that i needed a root canal. so obvious why that such a good thing but it was.

cannot afford it did not have the money. it was $1400 i do not have it. so ended up going in and talking to the bishop was kind of the mormon asked her a try to give me the churches money i've been raised with this insane idea that independence, would not take it any started to give me money from his own bank account credit not take an after weeks and weeks and weeks, he convinced me to apply for the grant. which is a whole other cup located for me to do. it is the government and i thought it was naughty but eventually i got this check for $4000. i got in the spring. i actually called the woman. i told her don't need all of this can you take some of it back. [laughter]. and she thought that i had lost it. she thought that i was prank calling her. and she was used to people not getting enough money.

not saying that they were supposed to get less. and for whatever this is, so she just said, that is your problem. sarcastic and paid for things about my books, i paid all my rent for the semester and had a thousand dollars left over. the first time i had had anything like that. i think it's egg is the time i experienced what i now think of to make the most powerful thing about money. you can think about things that are not money. that's the most powerful thing. if you have a lot of money and you're still thinking about money all of the time you're probably doing it wrong. dr. khoi le: so it frees you to finally be a student and learned. tara: i can actually focus on things besides effective much money i had how many hours i can work. or could i donate plasma to make

my rent. i just stopped thinking about all of that stuff. i can actually take classes that it could take. and it took psych 101. which i did not need. i had met the requirements but i thought it would be interesting. i enrolled in literally psych 101 which i actually think is probably every parent's nightmare. [laughter]. and their kid will take psych 101. and then home and sign canal psychoanalysis them. which is exactly what happened. that was incredibly important. i had no concept of mental illness intelligent that class. dr. khoi le: you felt like there were things you recognize. speedo and their was talk about paranoia and delusions of grandeur and mental illness and hold any set a power point and emerson might note, this is my .

he's describing dad. and that is when they started talking about remarriage. in the diversion of the story that was slightly different than the one i had grown up with. just a little bit. and i don't know if my dad is bipolar. ironically one of the symptoms if he has it is paranoia that he'll never see doctor for it. it was a whole new lens through which i could look at my childhood and understand what had happened. other explanations for why were were not allowed to go to school and why we had so many injuries was never something that was good to me. and while we were when we are injured, we do know that to a doctor. i just do not an answer to renters that i had worked tough. and then asked what he should was really helpful for me. dr. khoi le: in the state of mind the money and freedom to learn more.

and you been looking to the fact that a lot of things he talked about were true. present almost an advantage they assume that the you know nothing in the way, a lot still believe in things that they were taught and hard to know what to let go of the you it just letting go of everything just assuming everything is different. like a clean slate. is that because that kind of create a hunger and thirst for more knowledge, celebrating. tara: maybe a slight hunger that came out of it or maybe it's a flattering way of describing it. i tell people about a phd but not a high school diploma. [laughter]. is like a little bit of overcompensating maybe took a little far. we get call hunger you can call it hunger. it sounds nicer. dr. khoi le: an insatiable hunger.

speedo a lot of things that i definitely did not know. i had an idea of about things, they were just wrong. i thought i knew things. i was not aware of my ignorance until i guess i became aware of my ignorance when i learned about civil rights and events. that was the first time that i thought oh crap, i don't know anything. and what i do know is man. i never heard of it. i had heard a really weird version of slavery. it's really not good. when i attended the class and we did a section on slavery. i seen images from the time and some of the things in the famous thought is that you see from that time. rent account. we had seen a sketch of a slave auction. it was clear to me, this is not

really, when dad told us about this, this was not what i had imagined. it was probably fit with the story he told though. that was okay. few weeks went by we are talking about something else like you back in the blessing talking about this thing called civil rights movement. and i do not know when that was. and he put up a picture of this woman and said she had been interested for taking a seat in the mess and i thought that he met she had been arrested for stealing a bus seat. [laughter]. which is unfortunate misunderstanding. take a seat instead take the seat. i was still trying to figure out how to cheat get loose. [laughter]. i grew up in a junkyard, i knew what would be involved in getting a bus seat would be getting on the bus and that is not really, a casual thing.

not afternoon activity. [laughter]. dr. khoi le: united enough of it) unit up graduating as a top student in history. he said true great trait speedo they bunted m voted me. speedo i did not flunk out or anything. dr. khoi le: it's equivalent to a rhodes scholarship. to cambridge. so is a pretty big honor. seems like your parents are kind of proud of it and your father saying that it looked like the homeschooling paid off. tara: [laughter]. yes he did. i like that way of telling it. dr. khoi le: you would cambridge in are exposed to more ideas and you write about berlin. i don't think we need to go in all of that but it sounds like i

can read the you realize that you have a narrative it is interesting to other people. is that true when you start talking about your childhood. speedo i guess a little bit towards the end. i'm still pretty secretive about the whole thing. when the book came out, had good friends of mine came out and asked me what happened. it is i never talked to them about any of it. the kind of knew that i was homeschooled that i had a very clean safe version of that. i told. i think part of it was the few times that i had told somebody, you don't like being an outsider in that way. and you like being the one person that does not know anything or know what's going on. doesn't know that about stealing bus seats. so i kind of kept it to myself.

i had a few professors say that you should write about this. i thought why. what is the point of it. i didn't have any good sense of what the point of it was. then i went through this tremendously difficult process with my family. and i became estranged with them. i was becoming more mainstream than they were becoming more radical and effort went through the process, i started thinking that maybe maybe there is a reason to write it do it. i don't know for sure if there is but i will experiment. dr. khoi le: you wanted to put this straight out in case other people in a similar situation. speedo there's a reason that your writing. that's the reason you're telling yourself you're writing is not always the same. i thought there might be a reason. i thought i would talk about education. it was strange. i will fight about these really

important things i learned about. the process of learning and it will be useful thing to write about. i thought somehow i could write my entire education without bringing in my family. i convinced myself that that was possible. dr. khoi le: there's so much about your story and your journey. so i read this book when it first came out. and read it again letterman's book club about a year ago and then again, when i was in the hospital. i read it more than you have. after you read it the first time in the first time you are trying to find out what is going on. clinton i was really moved by the language. i wonder if you could just read two paragraphs. i would like to give the audience a sample of your writing voice. there to hear that have marked.

tara: he picked the landscape passages for you. that is everyone's favorite. okay. this is about idaho. the hill is paved with wildly. sagebrush is socialist. we filled is a ballet in each stem following all of the rest and versus of movement. a million ballerinas winning one after the other. the shape of that last only a moment and as close as anyone gets to sing wind. there's a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain. the perception of privacy in isolation and even dominion. in the back face you can be on brush and rock and it's a tranquility sheer immensity. homes but it's very magnitude

which vendors are merely of no consequence. dr. khoi le: thank you. [applause]. dr. khoi le: clearly you are writing as a first language. so it's hard to imagine writing so beautifully but not coming to really books until you're really in college. he must've had some experience. speedo in the bible the bible has linguistically claypool ethically in every other way. narratively. but there is some incredibly beautiful writing i think in the bible so i grew up with that printed in the storytelling and i had grown up with that kind of literary biblical tradition that it was not, as of the language was completely foreign to me.

i think it was foreign to me that i would ever write it that was incredibly foreign and strange. dr. khoi le: but is really different kind writing than academic writing. tara: i would say there are almost diametrically opposed to each other. yes. i think what it takes to write a good academic article, you want to say everything a most direct as possible and you wanted to be totally plain. i think that is kind of the kiss of death and storytelling actually. you actually want to build in a little bit more complexity and you want to let people see the scene and come to their own conclusions. it is kind of the great risk i think of storytelling. especially about your own life. because if you write a book that is about your life that is experiential and since they are putting people into the scene. they will have that experience, it was is if it happened to them and away printed in the might come to a different conclusion about you about your life. that is a strange kind of gamble to take.

but i think within an essay, here i will tell you about the person and here's what her dilemma is in here is what it all means. people might process that but i don't think they're going to think through it and more importantly feel threatened come to a conclusion that is really going to move them or stay with them. they kind of have to experience it. so i did decide to write the book and it sounded essay or an argument is just a story and everybody can get that story and come up with a whole lot of different things. i come all kinds of people come up to me have all kinds of takeaways and some people say i am so glad and i just know you reconciliation with you and your parents right around the corner. and some people come and say i'm glad you're not going to see these people again. [laughter]. and one right after the other. in both cases, i just kind of smile and say thank you. these and what has nothing to do

with me. it is god everything to do with him and what they need to hear. and think about and where is in their own minds. it should be that. dr. khoi le: you didn't write it for yourself and some events. tara: was trying to make sense of it. things started and find out fundamentally if i was a good person. i was not sure i was. i had done something in my own mind was unthinkable. which is that i had written to my parents i said i love you but i needed to be the case that we don't talk or see each other very much. because i just need a break there's a word for that. it is called estrangement. i could not have called it that is the time. i just said that i need space. i felt terrible for doing that. i thought it was the ultimate un- excusable thing. just not allowed to do that.

and if you do is because you're a terrible person. and yet, i had no other choice at least i could not see one. i had been trying to have a peaceful relationship with my family for as long as i can remember it was not happening for me. something a lot of the reason i wrote the book was to answer that question. is it okay that i did this. dr. khoi le: did you get some resolution with that pretty. tara: it helped clean i think, helped me see the truth is i think sometimes the choices that we make that we punish ourselves the most for is where we really didn't have any choice at all. i think writing it out kind of when i realized that there was no other path there. there is only one path. and helped me make peace with where tenant have. realizing it was not worry chosen that path.

there is probably the best ending. have something i could live with. and he can still love my parents. is not like i stopped loving them. this is the case that this was the form that that love had to take for a while. dr. khoi le: so you could do therapy are right in figure those things out and create a narrative that is really helpful. when he put down and you move on with thanks. were not letting you move on, were kind of dragging this out and making of talk about this over and over. tara: that is true. thanks. [laughter]. a good friend of mine beautiful book and i asked her ready for my book amount, was it really therapeutic for you. and she said, writing a book is terribly therapeutic printed publishing a book is not. that was true.

dr. khoi le: in your family and nine, seven of you and your parents, your for that have different names. everybody else's names, and contact everybody, username are they don't want their names. was there ever a consideration, do you figure out who your parents are. did you ever consider publishing it under 70 s9. tara: i did think about that. but my understanding is that's a pretty tricky. they could publish it as a novel. thought about saying is just a normal. there is two problems the first one is no one would have believed it. too weird. i told one of my brothers, i'm going to write about our family. mmr. this really long pause on the

other line. he said well, you won't have to make anything up. [laughter]. i genuinely thought that if i lose novel, no one would believe it, just too weird. no one would believe it. but the second reason is the more serious that when i went through the difficult process with my family, i think like a lot of other people who are struggling with estrangement or a difficult family yes what you really feel is kind of isolated from people. it feels like you're the only person that this is never had this problem and i remember thinking to myself, how can anybody think that i am a good person if they know that my mother does not think i am a good person. because my parents at that time were saying that i was bad. they thought that the reason that i left was because i was possessed. so i thought how could anybody ever trust me again given this reality. and i think once i had a little distance from bats, and just

seemed really important that if i was going to write the story and say this happened needed to happen to a real person and a needed to have happen to someone who would stand up and say this is me and it's my story and i might be your story. our elements of your story. but it didn't happen to a real person and that person is me. and it felt like a lot of the point of doing that would be blunted if you could not, if you are fictional and standing behind a fiction. so i ultimately decided what to do what i could to protect privacy and give people as much space as i could but i thought i really have to write it under my own name. she went with fiction, characters often get two dimensional. in here, you've labored so hard on this and the chilling complexity. i think the most complicated relationship is obviously with your brother shaun. there's so many things that he does with you that are so loving

and talk about him and breaking horses for you, saving your life on a white horse. that was it at great risk to himself and your father try to get you work with that share, which is a big question would be all of the right great entrances, well if you are going to make us do it, i will do it. not tara. we really love you and puts himself in harms way for you but yet is also a source of a lot of your pain. speedo some things i wanted to describe, sometimes we talk about this functional or abusive relationships, were so focused e negative but when we are describing make may not be recognizable who are actually experiencing those relationships i remember when i was 16, i was in my grandmother's house night watch this, some hallmark movie. but i remember there were really

violent relationship and i remember driving home and was really young and i remember there moment that i had this thought, i would've my relationship with shaun is abusive. and thought no credit because that guy that movie was like always wearing like drunk, he was just everything he was in coming to the character of a monster. and that's they look like. this not what shaun is like. except for certain times. and then he is absolutely like that. in my mind that i thought if someone is not like that all the time, then it is fine. i think i wanted to cry to capture it for people is what makes those relationships cope so compelling. it makes it so hard to leave. the love is real. often genuinely loving compelling people who need help or whatever but at some point you have to kind of ask the hard

question. can actually help this person if the answer is no, how do i take care of myself. i felt like i had to write about the relationship the way i experienced it is not completely wiped her black interest was motley what made it very difficult to walk away from. dr. khoi le: one of the few times you talk about your father being consistently proud of you is one start singing in public. there's one line and i think is so ironic you explain things he was doing. he wanted my voice to be heard. and obviously your voices are now. tara: he may or may not have had that in mind. dr. khoi le: i wonder if you would let us hear the voice that your father had in mind. and sing something for us. speedo i can do that. i always sing to him.

so i hope you like him. tara: have not signed in a while. okay. ♪ oh my god, when i a in awesome wonder, consider all the world have made. ♪ i see the sky, i hear the rolling thunder. ♪ ♪ then sings my soul, my savior god to the ♪

how great thou art, how great thou art ♪ ♪ then sings my soul, my savior god to the, how great thou art, how great thou art ♪ ♪ [applause]. tara: thank you very much. that was really fun. i love we have time. [applause].

[background sounds]. weeknights this week, we are featuring tv programs showcasing what is available every weekend on "c-span2". tonight, books from the middle east, first michael rubin and brian talk about the instability in the middle east and where u.s. actions against iran many elite. and then kim, talks about the decade-long rivalry between iran and saudi arabia. after that, cory, a retired foreign service officer served in the middle east for 25 years talks about u.s. policy in the region. in the recent confrontation because the u.s. and iran. much motive eat this weekend weekend on "c-span2". [background sounds]. a chilly smile, he shivered and