Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining us this evening. I am richard fontaine, the president for the new american security. Its a pleasure to welcome all of you tonight for the celebration of the new book upon its publication sites of the memoir a modern war and the practice. If you come to these events before and youve read our publication, that the work is no doubt known. He was the second president and has left very large shoes that ive been attempting to fill since then. He serves as a house member in pennsylvania and hes a visiting professor he is a visiting professor at Kings College in london. His book i saw in the proposal form quite a while ago when he was thinking about doing this and i have to confess that in the back of my head even just a few minutes ago i thought a book on the middle east and iraq and Counter Insurgency and terrorism and all of this, you know, how could this be possibly relevant to today but he has impeccable timing because the lessons that hes drawn