studio is michael o'brien he is the author of america's failure in iraq spent quite a bit of time as a contractor for the defense department in iraq and also divisor to the iraqi government. it out in the wake of the death of bin laden we've heard a lot about the war in terror a lot about bin laden a lot about a few understand but not so much about iraq a conflict that continues to go on with the with talk now coming out from the administration that perhaps we may want to keep our troops there a little bit longer than originally intended what's your reaction to that and how wise or he is with us once well lucy the fact is that promises were made during the campaign we're going to get all these troops out i feel without a real grasp of the reality of the situation former ambassador to iraq. a cracker when obama made his announcement of storing the troop withdrawals he actually said well these statements don't match the reality of what's going on in the ground in iraq and he was right the i was over the year and it was six and seven the height of the insurgency. and all of this goes yo

i think that the united states will be willing to say yes when the former defense contractor michael o'brien says the gap is likely to be filled by defense contractors who want to keep the number of soldiers it was possible because it's a political hot potato but nobody bats an eye one hundred thousand contractors school work in the same year of operations. some analysts say america's military spending is too powerful for any defense secretary to control whether he heads into the private sector to it's part of this revolving door culture that we are not install i think feels protective toward things interests he also recognizes that. pentagon is big business in the united states as robert gates prepares to him the reins of the pentagon over to leon panetta at the end of june he says quote all of the low hanging fruit have not only been put up and crushed but they think that's across the board many americans say they want to see the pentagon tighten its belt as well keel and ford are at the washington d.c. . meanwhile hillary clinton's arrived in pakistan another country where america's milit

chyron but we're not there to help realize they did by their michael o'brien went to iraq as a defense contractor to do just that help but i realized the affair had been there you know nearly a year i was there fourteen months i was just a warm body to collect fees for my company o'brien became disillusioned with the corruption and mismanagement and they were taking land from iraqis without securing total and when i brought this to their attention i said what would you build a house in the united states on a piece of land that you didn't know the guy kicked me out of his office still o'brien says americans won't see the end of defense contractors anytime soon without a draft the military depends on hundred thousand contractors to support its two wars abroad and the defense tried tractors where he came in. and you know when dwight eisenhower talked about the military industrial complex in one nine hundred sixty one were there now analysts say that without the defense industry america's nine percent unemployment rate would sort through eleven point five percent and facing those odds for