north africa so he has knowledge of al qaeda, is it fair to say virtually unmatched? he s an al qaeda superstar. he s one of the original members of the group. he reported directly to bin laden. when bin laden was killed, he was supposed to report to al zawahiri, the doctor from egypt who took over, he refused to do that and had been operating more or less on his own. we talk about these operations as high risk/high reward. talk a little bit about them and the decision to use these raids instead of drones. well, it s a tough decision because if you lose americans in a hostile place, it s very bad news indeed. in libya, it was a little bit easier to conduct an operation like this because there s actual commerce taking place and people driving around and suvs and the rest of that stuff is fairly common place. it s easier to do. the military was only peripherally involved in that exercise. but in somalia, it s a different story altogether.
that distance maybe? i think so. the downside is all that area looks the same, it doesn t feel the same any more. in my memory, it was all in black and white and sepia. now it s colorful. the only people there were the bad guys. now there is commerce taking place and people living there and growing rice, which is something they didn t do before because the fields were all fallow. it was an odd feeling to go back someplace that looked the same but didn t feel the same. of course general hun who was trying hard to kill me. he is not my enemy any more. a lot of hugging and kissing. that is the vietnamese way. when you came back it was a different feeling in this country for those who do not remember or are not students of history, it was difficult to have fought in the vietnam war.