if you want to get into the middle of a fight, that s your call. don t interfere with operations which meant also do not go up a company commander during a fire fight and ask for an interview. i never had that happen. i think freedom of the press is one of the great freedoms of a democracy. absolute great freedom. along with freedom of speech. we re blessed to have those two freedoms. of course they have to be exercised judicioujudiciously. i m delighted that the pentagon embedded journalists in the iraq war that s been going on for the last couple years. i don t know if you know this or not, but the pentagon before the iraq war went off offered american journalists the opportunity to go to fort buenning, and i believe ft. knox, other military bases to be briefed on battlefield maneuver activities and battlefield activities. they learned about tactics and they learned about fireman ufr and fire support. they were much more qualified to report to the american people what they
it either is or is not. and sometimes it gets into hurt some people. one time also on mercury, we had a problem and we were very short on time and the electrical engineering manager, bruce, he was going to go ahead and take two vials and test into a plug. i wouldn t let him do that. because the same plug, about the 54-connecter plug, had tbeen stripped. i told him the only way i let you do that is by making me a companion plug. we check it out. he said that takes four hours. i said, the longer you talk, the longer it takes. so he went to john yardly and yardly called me and he says, what s the story on that? i said, john, over my dead body. he says, i wouldn t let him do it. john calls back, he said who in the hell works for whom? i said, john, you know who works for whom. the longer you talk then he says, okay, we ll make a pig tail. later on john came up, he says, i could have saved me a lot of time, i shouldn t have even called you, i knew what the outcome was going to b