So she was very resentfull and said this is ridiculous and i have to pay them a fortune and it was outf of the money they were being paid. How did abigail handle the sons alcohol problem . She didnt talk about it. Two things you didnt talk about and one was alcoholism. Her brother died from alcoholism and when her son was ill all they said was he was a problem. It was clear he was dying. She dealt better than john. John said i will have nothing to do with him. But i found a wonderful letter from john to their youngest son after charles had died saying my loosing the presidency is nothing. I would never have been president and i would have given my life itself for charles to live. So you know how deep the afffection was but it was a horrible thing. And if anyone coughed, you just ignored it. If they sneezed, it was all right. But if you coughed it might mean you had tb. So you would never mention, particularly in a letter, someone was coughing. You might say they have a fever and down the road you would find out i mean just the personal had to be just about dead for people to say that is consumption. Oyster kate grandma there, there was a lot of spirit in her mother as well but it is easier to have respect and easier as a grandmother to be more forgiving than as a mother but the other statistic didnt. Mary was always helping her mother and when mary got married to, elizabeth for a while, when the parents were all right, elizabeth left, john and abigail, but it was quite soon and she had to be home taking care of them. They believe in starting a precedent . To set a new example . What kind of life . Decision in life. That is interesting. Childhood. All the different stages matter. For my knowledge of children, you make one impact before they are 6 or 10 or whatever and when they run out of lessons they have forgotten everything. I am surprise to remember something. They did the best they could as parents, they were strong parents, and some of them turned out well and some of them didnt. [applause] thank you so much for coming. That was diane jacobs on booktv. For more information visit the authors web site, diane jacobsauthor. Com. Up next we bring you Mark Johnsons radio show, he into these participants in the 2014 colby military writers symposium. Appearing on the program are Douglas Macgregor, warriors rage, the great tank battle of 73 eastern, john borling, author of taps on the wall poems from the hanoi hilton, jack segal, former nato adviser in vietnam veteran and logan beirne, author of the 2014 called the Award Winning book blood of tyrants George Washington and the forging of the presidency. This is just under two hours. Your phone calls, radio vermont presents the mark johnson show. Thanks for tuning in, thanks for spending part of the day with us. Coming up on the program we are broadcasting live from norwich university, we are here at the cold the military writers symposium. It is a great honor to be here. This is an event we have had the Great Fortune to broadcast for the past of living years and is one of the events i look forward to in the first of the broadcast year. We want to thank a bunch of folks, and what we are broadcasting from a beautiful facility build five or six years ago that i would very much encourage you to come down and visit. It is a great pleasure on the mark johnson should have our friends from cspan who are going to be filming our program today. We will keep you apprised of when that might be showing. What an honor. As somebody who holds brian lamb in the highest regard, the founder of cspan, if anybody out there i ever tried to model my interviewing on it is brian lamb, he is the master of the short question and for him it is all about making the guests looked good and i will do my best to make that happen. We will not be able to take phone calls this morning due to some technical limitations, but we do hope that you kick back this morning and enjoy our broadcast. We have an incredible line up. I want to say one more thing about the event before we get to our guest, this was an event that began in the mid1990ss, dedicated to former cia director William Colby who was a real force early on. This is so valuable about this event, this is a military institution. When i was first invited here my assumption was this was going to be an event that was going to be a series of guests that were nothing but promilitary, and i have found it to be exactly the opposite. You got to give the folks, general Richard Snyder and the rest of the leadership lot of credit for making this event happened because what it really is all about is providing guests who challenge the status quo, the make this a 3dimensional discussion and the bottom line is they try to get the message across that war is the last resort and i have to say i have been impressed with the quality and criticism that they have allowed in this university from some of the guests. We have a great line up and we will conclude the program at 10 30 this morning and talk with jack segal who served on the National Security council, an expert on the ukraine, he will talk about whether the ukraine is the next cold war. In our second hour this morning we will talk with the colby award winner logan beirne who has written a compelling book about George Washington. Later this hour we meet who i am sure will be an incredible man, john borling who spent 61 2 years at the hanoi hilton and has written a compelling book talking about the poems he was able to tap out at that facility. We begin this morning, a warm welcome this morning to somebody who will just fit right into what i was just talking about, challenging the status quo. A warm welcome this morning to colonel Douglas Macgregor, author of warriors rage the great tank battle of 73 easting. Thank you very much for joining us. How are you today . Great, thank you. I want to begin where you begin which is challenging the decision by george bush i to not go into baghdad to not finished off the Republican Guard. You say this decision in fact lead to the 2003 invasion. Let me read one short paragraph. Just as world war ii began where world war i Operation Iraqi freedom ended where does it sort ended in 1991. Despite its initial success on television reminiscent of the first gulf war americans eventually discovered Operation Iraqi freedom was fundamentally flawed. The negative assessment is an insight not easy to develop. Why do you feel the way you do . Guest in both cases in 1991 and subsequently in 2003 there was no coherent strategy. No one sat down and said what is the purpose of the intervention to begin with . What were trying to achieve . How do we best achieve that aim and finally, what do we want things to look like when we are thrilled . We call this in military terms purpose method in state. It is a very basic framework that you are taught early on to apply to Planning Operations yet there is no evidence anyone at the strategic level either in 1990, 91 or in 2003 did. Host when you talk a battle 73 east, it was a bloody affair. The 73 easting is very interesting. First of all, understand what that means, it refers to a north south grid line and we referred to north south redlines as eastings in the northern red line that we talk about 73 easting as in a desert that is essentially flat, theres nothing out there you could identify. You cant point to a town or river or something. The only thing you could say is the 73 easting is where the collision largely occurred so we call it the battle of 73 easting. It was inside iraq a little north and a little west of kuwait. In the flat open desert that otherwise no one would ever have known. Host you write that it was quite a challenge. Guest we have to be careful. What we have to understand is on the 26st of february at 4 00 in the afternoon we had been periodically held back for several days. You could have covered with the unit that i was applied to assigned to, i was in cougar squadron, the second squadron, turned out to be the lead element in the 7th core across southern iraq. We could have covered that territory that we took three days, 120 miles, probably in 6. 5 to 8 hours and we were very frustrated because constantly we were halted and halted. There was an emphasis at high levels on traffic control, moving everything that you own very slowly forward. It really resemble world war i, moving thousands of troops on line across this battlefield. Announce around 4 00 in the afternoon when coming got a heavy sandstorm and we knew we had already driven through lot of artillery. We encountered lots of enemy outposts, we knew we were in what the soviets would call the security zone so we knew we were going to make any contact but we were being held back and when we were finally released to move forward we were given no other unlimited advance. Another of these reliance, but as chance would have hit the people at high levels who were trying to micromanage us were unaware that their picture of the battlefield was inaccurate. It was a sandstorm, nothing was flying, they had no idea with any specificity what was out there and we collided literally with a brigade of about 2500 iraqi troops, a Republican Guard brigade, this brigade was at 100 strength because it was actually the rear guard the attachment because most of the Republican Guard sadly had already escaped because of this very slow ponders advance across southern iraq. We collided with this and broke the back of this brigade within 15 minutes. It took another 40 minutes to complete the job and once again we had to hold because we ran out of things tissue. I was leading the attack and realized there was nothing else out there and so i said cougar squadron this is cougar 3, we have a halt so this whole juggernaut of 1100 men came to a halt and i called eagle troop which was the main attack. I had placed them there and i said find out where we are, we had no idea where we were and that came up 73 easting and we were halted and subsequently an hour later i was ordered to withdraw and became unglued i was so furious. Why would we withdraw after we just won this battle. Why not exploit it . And i got into an argument briefly and finally the deputy Regimental Commander who is a great man named steve robyn was in the regimental headquarters and said tell Douglas Macgregor to see where he is if he thinks it is a tour. We had two cavalry troops, 125 men each with the rest of the squadron behind us an artillery battery on this peninsula. It looked literally as flow probably two or three miles in front of the rest of the regiment which had halted as they had been ordered to and we stayed there and sustain the number of counterattacks, we ultimately lost one bradley fighting vehicle struck by iraqi fire and the crew was wounded, one man was killed. That was their only loss but again we were halted and once we halted the enemy had a chance to shoot at us effectively. As long as we were on the move and attacked on the move we were almost in vulnerable to enemy fire. We probably killed, estimates vary, 1200, 1800 men, destroyed 70 tanks, probably 100 armored fighting vehicles so it was not an even fight. We really annihilated them and they stunned to see us because we came out of a sand storm from a direction they didnt expect. Host were talking with colonel Douglas Macgregor about his book warriors rage the great tank battle of 73 easting. At what point did you find out that you were going to stop, that you were not going to push even further and try to annihilate the Republican Guard . We sensed that this was the case probably at 8 00 in the evening. This was four hours after the initial assault. We were told that we would eventually going to reserve status because the divisions that were behind us would move through and, quote, complete the task. What i did not know at the time was most of the Republican Guard was already gone. They had begun withdrawing 24 hours earlier and again, we had had this long, long punishing air campaign and the assumption was that the air campaign would destroy iraqs command and control, dismember the force. That wasnt the case. Saddam hussein had absolute control of his forces and was able 24 hours earlier to make the judgment it was time to leave and he was most concerned about Republican Guard, 80,000 men. They had the best equipment, the most reliable troops and i would argue they were the only ones who actually fought. He got them out. We had been so slow and i say we, i am talking about the Senior Officers. General franks, core commander and general schwarzkopf in saudi arabia and most of what happened was on auto pilot. Each service, army, navy, marines, air force, he wasnt really a handson commander and all of the Senior Officers were Vietnam Veterans who had a picture of war based on their experience in viet nam which was completely irrelevant to what we were doing and they didnt understand in my judgment what a brilliant force had been built in the 70s and 80s and the air force generals understood that they had enormous advantage over the opponent but on the ground both the army and marine generals understood they were facing an enemy comparatively speaking of the not present real resistance. Host how close do you think you were to getting rid of the Republican Guard . How much more work would it have taken . Guest we should have gone into the pursuit immediately. There is no reason we should have stopped. We rain excellent condition, we lost one vehicle, one killed and a few winded and frankly speaking when you lose the man like that you lose soldiers in combat, you want to vindicate the effort, make the loss worthwhile so we very much wanted to continue the attack but it was obvious there was no interest in that. Everyone seemed to be interested at high levels in ending this as soon as possible, declaring victory and taking vows for this great achievement they had nothing to do with. In fact a friend of mine after it was over, 73 easting is a larger battle and what they are in. Victory has many fathers, we are victorious and i never saw anyone who out ranked me, and host how do you draw the line . Had more effort been made in gulf war i that gulf war ii wouldnt have happened a lot of people feel gulf war ii shouldnt have happened no matter what. How do you draw this line . A couple things to consider. In 1991 you had an opportunity with very little force with Saddam Hussein. This man was almost universally unpopular inside his own country popular country to put to the belief. Brigade commander and few surviving members of the iraqi Republican Guard brigade actually spoke to us in english at the time. I am standing here at 8 15 in the evening, so many fires burning and so many secondary explosions that it is almost a light at night and he says to me in perfect english, why are you stopping . You must go to baghdad. You must end this. You must remove this man Saddam Hussein. He killed our best generals, he tells us, he needs to go away. I of course was quite struck by this. It turns out this man had been at fort benning during the iran iraq war and receive instruction and training when we were backing Saddam Hussein against iran. You could have removed Saddam Hussein without a great deal of difficulty and turned it over to other generals in the iraqi army were patriots and interested in being read of Saddam Hussein. The problem is in the United States the people at the top 5 in very absolute terms, in terms of if we go into iraq we have to occupy it. Why . The history of occupation in the middle east is disastrous for any european army. It is the bucket of water. Put your hand in as soon as you withdraw your hand the water returns. That is what we ultimately did. In 2003 we all knew in 1991 as we breathing in may and june of 1991 we stood around and looked at each other and set in ten years we going to be back because Saddam Hussein was not going to run. To was not going to back away from the policies he had pursued. Was no surprise in 2003 when i was approached by Newt Gingrich and actually was in 2002 to began planning intervention in iraq. Again as i went forward and put together the plan which was largely adopted and was sent down to see tommy francs who was then in command to talk to his inner circle two things became clear. First of all we dont want to occupy, we simply want to remove this inner circle at the top because to occupy is an invitation to disaster. Who wants for an army in their country. If you occupy north philadelphia where i am originally from with the army and marine corps after a month we would have shot at them too. You dont want foreign entities in your neighborhood. The second part was it wouldnt take a lot. We bombed this country on a scale of the Second World War off and on for the previous ten years so we did need to bomb anything. And in the Iraqi Military would cooperate with us. It seemed pretty straight forward. All of this subsequently changes and i think as a result of dr. W wolfoitz and others in the administration determined they were going to transform iraq into a liberal democracy, friendly to the west and is real and so forth and so on. Host a lot of what you are talking about happened after 9 11. Did you say to them did you feel that it made sense to do some sort of limited invasion into iraq or no invasion at all because it didnt have anything to do with 9 11 . It had nothing to do with 9 11. I always understood the 1991 war was the unfinished work which is really what this book is about. The unfinished work, the war we did not finish. We didnt finish it as world war i ended the combatants were exhausted so there was no possibility of pursuing a. That was not a case in 91. We had this brilliant force on the ground, in the air, we could have done anyth