Why is it taking so long to get the sewage system fixed and baghdad . Why is it taking so long to get the lights back on . There is this sense of impatience that you are laughing i assume because how ridiculous it was and what i would say to the reporter was work, 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 this, ohio under the best circumstances imaginable . Five years on the lowend . I mean, we are in new york city and there are projects that you invest in that developers are investing in that started investing 10 years ago and they are still not done, but according to the Mainstream Press we were supposed to have everything fixed and that was what they wanted, the narrative they wanted to try to drive and they did successfully. The white house for its part after what happened with that Mission Accomplished matter really needed to redouble its efforts to re explained people in everywhere could that this was going to be messy, long and look, did they effectively anticipate the rise of al qaeda in iraq as far as fighters and an insurgency . Perhaps not, did they know how corrupt the country was when they got their . Perhaps not. We would joke and say next time we invade a country lets invade a country that works like belgium. [laughter] the level of the level of unknowns were significant and i do believe we made a mistake by not having as many troops as we needed. The civilian leadership during that first year was very adamant that we needed more troops said this is a war within a war, the civilian leadership in the military leadership at cross purposes on strategy. Another question . I have a question relative to whether it was something discussed or if you have an opinion. Early on in the war, and the invasion tommy frank seem to keep the army in place and working with the tribal leaders, with the good old Yankee Dollar and we had not seen the looting or break up. State sends over mr. Bremmer and he breaks up the armory. Seems like everything went to hell and that the situation worsened. Decisions made at state and not defense dme, relative to the . I have a i do have a comments and i think this is one thing we will debate for a long time. The fact of the matter is that in the first gulf war and i dont have the number in front of me, but we took an enormous number of iraqi pows. We were rolling through and it taking whole battalions of iraqi soldiers. That didnt happen this time around and after the looting was allowed to happen, you didnt have any mechanism to pay them. You couldnt find people. You had no officer corps. The entire top army Saddam Hussein had three new generals and they were all basically like political patriot jobs. All of those folks went away. You cannot run an army with just infantrymen particularly conscripts, so what happened was in addition obviously you had no resources in order to train them , in order to equip them. It was all gone and what we did, what bremmer within the first two months, really that he was there was to graduate the First Battalion in the new iraqi army. So, the process of rebuilding the military and ultimately most of the people part of subject under the rank of colonel over able to come back and folks that were part of the iraqi Civil Service because you have to be a member basically to have a job, most of those people were ultimately rehired and im not talking about a year or two years later. Of the process moved quickly to evaluate these folks and put them back in jobs. We had functioning agencies, departments of the iraqi governments and a functioning we had a functioning morality and baghdad within four months after the fall of the statue, so the process did move fairly quickly and not something people never really realized there the other problem we had in baghdad, of course, was you did not have police officers. So, when we went into iraq, the Police Departments in baghdad, Baghdad Police department collapsed. We had to re recruits people and retrain the folks in a short period of time, so while we were trying to do the military and we also had to do the civilian Security Services as well and we were putting thousands of cops on the streets by september or october. Taking some of the burden off of our soldiers who didnt need to be traffic cops. They needed to go out and hunt and kill terrorists, so i think theres a lot of misinformation about both and what is referred to as the disbanding of the iraqi military, but im one that you cant really disband a something that didnt exist in the first place by the time we got to it. Other questions . Did the Bush Administration fully understand the tension between the sunnis and she has in iraq before they made the decision . Thats one of these things that we had to deal with as we were they were bringing expatriates in to try to help with the negotiation process. From the administration standpoint during the time of the coalition i cant speak to the decisionmaking process before him. I can speak to what happened when i was there and the governing 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. The statue fell in april. There was a period where jim garner was there and they were trying to put together some sort of reconstruction effort. You had looting and once bremmer got into the country they immediately started working on government issues at a much greater speed and were able to put together this governing council. There were obvious disagreements , but we had some very experienced diplomats that were working to bring these different factions together to help create the transitional Administrative Law and ultimately the constitution that governed the election. 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 are a lot of people dont realize that the map was drawn by a foreign power that came in and so there is to 1 degree or another sort of a name Unnatural Union to this. The one thing that brought everyone together was the fact there were Oil Resources. How do you divide up those Oil Resources and thats something we are dealing with today with a discussion about iraqi kurds splitting off. Theres the idea of who gets which oil field and what amount of residue and what form a divided iraq as opposed to a united iraq, but i think that when it comes to sectarian issues i think its hard for us to understand. The iraqis and anyone in the middle east and this is one of the reasons why when we talk about islamic extremism, there is a sense of history and the least middle east that they have long they look far to the future about their society. I once sat with a gentleman who became a chief justice. We were in this bombed out building getting ready to reappoint some justices to the Iraqi Supreme Court who had been thrown off the bench. They were almost executed by saddam, but he didnt execute them. He threw them off the bench because he basically wanted to dictate to them what their rulings should be in murder case that impacted his son. These men who are in their 70s were altogether and i was talking to this gentleman and he i said theres a lot of work to be done to rebuild the judiciary here. Remember, though iraqis were writing law on before the perfection of the mechanical clock. They were the original lawyers and he looked across the table through thick glasses and said to me and he knew i was a lawyer also and he said we have been there before and it was very striking because he wasnt talking about the presaddam era he was reaching back to this great history that they had, then great legal history they had. There was 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 thats the way these folks approach the relationships. Now, and some respects i could be a good thing because it gave them stamina. The media loves to talk about loves to suggest that not only were americans losing confidence in that iraq mission, but they iraqis really didnt 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 or got to know him very well deputy mayor of baghdad in which you do buy one time in quebec to me and i said how was your trip and he said im so angry and of course im saying to myself is he angry with us or me and he said im not angry with you, im angry with us. Im angry with this idea that we allow this. Ive seen the world now. Ive been to europe now and i have seen what other countries in the middle east have made of themselves and im angry at us for allowing this to go on for so long and that sentiment pervaded the iraqis i dealt with , sunni, shia and turkmen. One of the things to remember about iraq and sectarianism in iraq, iraq was not a dry country. Iraq was a very liberal country where they had a separation between mosque and state. They had intermarriage with a different set of islam. You could live next door and be shia and living next door to a sunni. Saddam husseins 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 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 sort of found religion after the 1991 gulf war because he wanted to be more relevant within the world of islam. He wanted to be able to attract more of those folks so that he could then use them to increase his sphere of influence. Further questions . Hey, tom. Understanding the media realities that are the most. How reliable would you say the us is as a partner today . How much of a hit in credibility did we take by a garden, prematurely walking away from a mission . I think about syria today. I cant help it. How bad is that . The skittishness of the public and reliability of the news media to paint the picture. It gets to this gentlemans question about what i was saying about their longview, which some people may say look, maybe thats one of the reasons why this wasnt going to work because as a country we were not going to have the stamina to do this for the long haul, but is certainly did hurt our country. When you tell your enemy when you are leaving they will just wait and then when you not only tell them when you are leaving, but then when the generals tell the commanderinchief look, we went to get out. We will to do you tell us to do, but we really need 30,000 troops to stay in the commanderinchief says no, we will give you 10 and the National Security advisor goes on National Television and says these guys from isis, dont worry about it. They are the jv team. Over the last eight years during the Obama Administration we send every single solitary wrong message that we could have sent to the people that one we were fighting, too we were trying to help and three who were mine and waits to assert their influence around the world and we now see the soft underbelly of your. Europeans are focused more on Climate Change than securing their own citizens. At some point we have got it together. We have an administration that is at least talking tough on terrorism and time will tell of the Trump Administration ultimately deals with these threats, ultimately sells it to the public as well because that what we are talking about here. We are talking about, not just having an idea but being able to sell it in such a way that you cant sustain the policy. But, if malik he the minute we left he said im like i have to find a new friend. Where did he go . He went to iran and russia in both the russians and iranians have asserted a enormous amount of influence now in the middle east and when we we have virtually no friends and this is the consequence of people believe in that the war was a fools errand. This is the consequence of folks not appreciating what we actually accomplished of their, that litany of things that i was talking about that we did, that we failed to communicate. So, when someone at the white house says to me look, we want people thinking about the economy and jobs in the president ial election going on i said you dont have the choice anymore to try to forget iraq is going on here you have to push back and if you dont push back, and you dont go around new york and washington and go around the editorial filter to americans like people in this room who are reasonable, who might agree with certain points, disagree with certain points, but who can be reasoned with about the costs and benefits of a particular strategy. If you arent willing to do that, then ultimately you know whos making a foreignpolicy . Cnn or in the other hand maybe fox news or some website that no one has ever heard of that suddenly appears on all your facebook feeds. So, we do have to educate ourselves and we do have to make sure this is the challenge of our information age. It comes with the response ability and its really important that we take these lessons from iraq and we internalize them and we talk in real terms about what actually happened so that we can learn. Thank you very much. [applause]. Pleasure to be with you. Thank you. [applause]. Thank you. [applause]. Thank you. Seen that time, on behalf of the Union PresidentMike Sullivan who could not be your tonight, i would like you to i like to present you with the union medallion for joining us on this july afternoon and evening. Thank you very much. [applause]. Thank you. Also, the half of the military Affairs Committee i would like to present you with our military affairs challenge coin. [applause]. Thank you. [applause]. Thank you. I think everyone of you for attending, but it wouldnt be a military affairs event without continued plugs for our next events, so heres the 18 the bills so to speak. Skydiving august 18. We have skydivers in the audience wearing their wings. Way to go. I see people looking at their feet, try not to make eye contact right now. Join us for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane that day and earn your wings giving you immense bragging rights at the main bar downstairs. September 11, special day for the world and for our city especially. We will have a very special guest Army Lieutenant general who is the Commanding Officer of the armys own special forces and they are the units really taking it to the enemy at this point on the war on terror. Thats september 11. After that, we have another special guest and a special different type of plane or we will have the United States air force commander of the Space Command here, fourstar general j raymond whos going to talk to us about stuff we usually dont talk about, which is plans on how 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 and seriously, hes a humorous guy, but look to be seriously and is said on, this really is Rocket Science and we are going to get it done. You will go over plans for eight trip to mars which should be interesting. Please clear your calendars for those dates and join us. Again, that concludes tonights program and i thank you for coming. The main bar is open downstairs. Thank you. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] i was trying to figure out my life as an astronaut, administrator for education, all these 24 years working for nasa, that identity was gone because i retired. I moved back home and the reason i moved home was to be with my dad and he is now gone, so that was a moment of really trying to dig deep and understand the purpose and why im here and ive been told mark twain has said the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why. Why were we born . What is our purpose . I was told by my editor that mark twain didnt really say that, so if you look in the book theres no mark twain reference their. I still use mark twain. Still kind of cool, i think. Figuring that why out and as a society in this day and age with all the things going on and all of us figuring out why we are here to help impact the people here that will be that explores to change our planet the positive. Thats why i wrote this book and its the you will share your story. Its the Family Community not giving up believing in me when i did believe in myself and its a journey of steam, Science Technology engineering arts and mathematics. I grew up not even knowing what steam was, but i was living it every day with pno lessons and building bicycles and bread trucks all these Different Things and i think one of the things that will help us as a civilization is when we realize that we are really on this small little marble together technically working together as one civilization. Granite we dont always see this happening everyday, but from the Vantage Point of the International Space station when i look out over virginia, and i see my hometown from space its only 240 miles up the different distance from dc to new york. Going around the planet every nine minutes and seeing the sun rise and sunset every 40 minutes, doing this with people who we used to fight against. I was there with the russians and of the germans and having these moments where im flying over virginia, five minutes later we are over paris. Leo i heart is one of my crewmates and hes looking down saying my mom is probably eating down there, also. In russia we are there in a couple minutes and it shows you how connected we are as a people and then flying over afghanistan and looking down and seeing how beautiful it is, but knowing whats happening down there, all of these places of unrest and fighting and these things going on, but from that Vantage Point its simply signing. So, im going to try to get you all signed up for Space X Mission like [laughter] i have coupons appear. You might be the lucky one to get the space x ride. If you get an opportunity and whatever the experience you have get to see this, it fundamentally, cognitively changes you as a person to make you want to do better when you see our planets from that Vantage Point. You can watch this other programs online at book tv. Org. One of the things we like to do on book tvs preview some books that will come out this fall for joining us now from new york is author and photographer named pete souza. What do you do for living . Guest right now im trying to finish up my book. Its pretty much done, but