Short term politics will work to their advantage, the tax issue which has been the difficult part, the Super Committee we have it i call the avengers in politics, with powers untold in our history, that couldnt reach an agreement because the taxes, republicans wouldnt agree to any significant increase in taxes now they are talking to amounts that will reach that point and i am confident we will get something done. Rose jake tapper, ian mcewan, and norm ornstein when we continue. Funding for charlie rose was provided by the following. Rose additional funding provided by these funers. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. From our studios captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose one of the deadliest Battle Office the war in afghanistan took place on the morning of october 3rd, 2009, nearly 400 taliban fighters attacked 53 american troops stationed at a remote military base known as combat outpost keating, a, eight soldiers died, a pentagon investigation revealed the outpost had no strategic value, jake tapper is a senior White House Correspondent for abc news at a Hospital Holding my newborn son when he heard the tragic report, that story compelled him to report about it, he documents his findings in a new book, the book is called the outpost to an untold story of american central lohr. Author john i cant your writes if you want to understand how the war in afghanistan went off the rails you need to read this book. I am pleased to have jake tapper back on this program, and especially at this table. Lcome. Thank you, charlie, it is great to be here. Rose take me to the time you saw this story, because you are a busy man, you know, a newborn. Yeah. Rose and you read this story and it says what do you . Well, you know, moment that you are holding your child is always a poignant moment. I am holding my son in the Recovery Room amend it is a wonderful moment, and then i look up and out of the corner of my eye i see in the little hospital tv this report on cable news or whatever about this outpost, and immediately, it was clear from the reports that this outpost was in an unbelievably vulnerable place at the bottom of three steep mountain, just 14 miles from the pakistan border, and the troops there felt like sitting ducks. And in many ways they were, and i am holding my son, and i hear about eight other sons taken from us, and i just had to know more. I cant really explain it, if somebody had said at that moment you are going to write, you know, a lengthy book about this, it would have been surprising to me. Rose were you looking for a story that you wanted to write about, to write a book, it just happened . It just happened, the story spoke to you and. I am not a military reporter or war reporter, i had been to iraq once and covered from the Baghdad Bureau for a couple of weeks but never had been to afghanistan, the since i have been a couple of times but no, i had been reporting on the war from the comfort of the north lawn of the white house and, you know, but it is the washington coverage, obama versus mcchrystal and competent address coming, petraeus and replacing mcchrystal and what is the troop going to be, 10,000, 40,000, and, you know, it is superficial, i am only going to talk about my own coverage, that is superficial coverage and that is what i was doing. It is political, and it is treating troops as if we are talking about, you know, manufacturing, you know, some sort of toy, 40,000, 20,000, and for whatever reason, combat outpost keating slapped me out of that, i cant explain it, and i just had to know more about who these eight men were that were killed, why is there this mystery, why would anybody put an outpost there what is it like to wake up and be facing and out numbering force, seven to eight, seven to eight or one of ferocious taliban fighters, all of these things that i had just kind of not paid any attention to. Rose so at the end of the day it is a story about what . At the end of the day, it is a story about reckless decisions by commanders and unbelievably heroic and selfless troops. Rose and where does that courage come from when you write a story like this . Because you interview the people who survived. I interviewed 225 people, almost all of the 45 men who survived the attack. Rose and what did they say about what their mindset was as this was happening . And what is the imperative of the moment and do they think this is it, man there is no way we are getting out of this alive. Yes, they did, a number of them thought that, it has been nice working to you, that was said a few times and there were a number of moments that i heard about that i put in the book of people accepting that they were going to be killed. Rose right. Noticing that the sky is really blue and the grass is really green and they are not going to the leave this particular. Rose there is the day i die. Yes, it happens a number of times. One thing that comes back over and over is the selflessness of these men, these troops, all eight of the guys who died to a man died doing something self less, either returning fire, the first one killed, private kevin thompson, Young Private from reno, nevada, and he runs out to man his station in the mortar pit, and he gets shot, every one of them running out to deliver ammunition, specialist Michael Skuza good shot, everyone doing something to help someone else, it is a kind of self lessness, that we dont see in our dae day to day lives here when it happens here when a policeman the buys a pair of boots for a homeless man it is the front page of the newspapers, it is every hour in afghanistan somebody doing Something Like that for one of their fellow men. Rose and when asked about it they say . I was only doing my duty. Or they say i am nothing. Whawhat i did was nothing, you should write about him, what i did is nothing you should write about hill. What i did was not a big deal, you know what i feel bad about is this. There are guys that survived that did unbelievably heroic things, i was in the room with one kid, zach, raised a mennonite in ohio, and he was man ago battle station, all day for 12 hours in this humvee that was getting torn apart by overwhelming taliban forces, mortars, rockets, bullets, and i was, just remarking to him, zach, i would have run to the dining hall and gotten under a table, i mean, how did you stay out there . He is like, he is embarrassed that he wasnt doing things as brave as everyone else was doing. I am like, you were doing your job, you were supposed to be at that table and you were supposed to be manning but these other guys were delivering ammunition and roam say, he was leading the battle to retake the other side of the camp. Zach, you are so brave, doesnt think he is. Rose you also write that you had to decide how honest you would describe the horrors of war. This is really tough. This is a really difficult thing as a writer and as a journalist. Because the point of this book for me was to have people like me who have not beeneven though i read the newspapers and Pay Attention and have been covering the war to snap me out of my tumor. And to have people understand in a way that i now understand what it is these troops go through. One of the things they go through is unbelievable pain and in some cases death. And that was a very difficult decision for me, how honest to be. We sanitize the war here in the american media, taking our cues from the public. They dont want to talk about the war much at all. They are wary of it and it has been going on for so long. I dont want to cause pain to the families who dont know the details of how their husbands or sons died. But actually i talked about bob woodward about it and he was very helpful in mentoring, and he said, you need to ten the, tell the truth so i did. Rose tell what you know . I held back a little bit. Rose what kinds of things would you hold back . A brain being pulp, i didnt think i needed to use that word from bullets, pulpify. Something to the ribs. Rose what can happen to the ribs. Rose we saw some of that with Steven Spielberg when we saw the movie about dday that was the thing about the movie that made it different from other movies. I remember. Rose limbs being ripped off and that kind of thing. When i saw private, staving private ryan i needed a drink just seeing the movie and it was hollywood so this is real but i felt like ultimately i had to be honest, there were other things that were difficult decisions to make, one of them was, one of the soldiers who dies in the book and the back trace it is whole history of the outpost from 2006 to 2009, one of the, one of the soldiers who was killed at the time he was killed, the biggest thing on his mind was he was a husband and a father, he also had a girlfriend, and she had just had a child,. Rose so. He had two families. He had two families, it was a secret and racking him with guilt and felt he needed to get right about it with god and talked a lot about it with my friends but i knew if i reported on it i would be airing dirty laundry the family didnt necessarily want out there but ultimately. Rose about a dead man. About a dead man and ultimately the point is, and i have heard mark bowl in his interview about you about zero dark 30 talk these are ordinary doing doing extraordinary things these are ordinary people and i didnt think it helps the book to sanitize who these people were so i wrote about their fights and about their personal struggles and the fights they were having with the wives at home. From the moment you read that story, holding your baby, to this book, how did the story change . Well, in i believely. That you wanted to write. Initially the book was just going to be about the men in the battle. Rose right. 2009. 361 kav. But then other people who has served at that outpost reached out to me, because they heard that i was writing the book. They saw mike allen wrote a piece about it in politicos playbook and. A young captain which set up the outpost, he wanted me to write about, Staff Sergeant jerod monty who had been killed, won the medal of honor posthumously and write about his brothers and lieutenant dave roller, he wanted me to write about his commander who had been killed and the fact they had some success there is in that valley, but the outpost wasnt all meaningless and for nought, they had actually done some things, so it became, as these troops became invested in the projects, it became a much larger and much more comprehensive study and i think, hopefully a better book because it is a narrative. And what is the role of stan crystal, of stan mcchrystal, the former commander of troops in afghanistan who later had to leave . Stan mcchrystal makes a decision to lay the closure of the outpost. The men who come in, colonel randy george and Lieutenant Colonel brad brown they come in to take control of this area of operations which includes combat outpost keating in may, june, 2009 and they present mcchrystal with scenario what they call in the military realignment, closing down a bunch of camps. Right. They see a bunch of camps that have no strategic or tactical value and want to close them down before anyone gets killed. And mcchrystal says no, they delays it. And by the time they make plans to close down the catch it ultimately proves too late. Rose does he regret that . I did talk to him on background for the book, he did not express regret, he explained his reasons, there are reasons and guy through them in the campaign called the generals competing considerations there were a lot of reasons one of which is there were not a lot of helicopters and assets in the country, even after president obama started surging. And some of the ones they wanted to use to close the camp were being used for other things, including the missing in action soldier who is now a prisoner of war, having walked off his base. Including a Different Military operation north of camp keating, including president karzai not wanting mcchrystal to close down any bases before the august 2009 election because that would signal weakness, including the fact that mcchrystal and obama were engaged in a backandforth about troop levels and mcchrystals report about how many troops should come to the country. And mcchrystal told colonel george he didnt want to get ahead of the president is one point where he was being sensitive after many, many back and forth about whether or not the generals he was trying to exert too much power. Ultimately he made the decision to delay it and i think there were a lot of people who were very upset about that. Rose why did they call it camp keating. Ben keating was the second in command at combat outpost what was then called camp can desh. Camp keating was a young man from, his parent were ministers, he was very devout republican who had really come to have his doubts about the war and he was killed in a horrible accident that had to do with the fact that the terrain is so difficult there. It is one of the things that was so interesting, to me charlie is that in that part of afghanistan, the foot of the hindu kush Mountain Range the land is just as dangerous as the taliban and you have soldier after soldier killed because these roads are not meant for the trucks we have there or the mountains are too jagged for our helicopters to fly and land there. And ben keating was killed driving a truck and he sounds like an amazing guy, i wish i had gotten to know him. Rose how does battle like this change soldiers . It changes them forever, i now hear from, i mean, i heard from them while writing the book but now i have heard from them even more wives in particular, but also troops who have now been subjected to madness. Rose madness . The madness of war, the madness of posttraumatic stress disorder, the madness of trying to resub murj yourself in a culture people are man there is not enough foam on their latte. I am serious one guy told me about that he almost snapped in line to starbucks. Rose because he wanted to say. Look you shouldnt be mad about the foaming. Being there and talking and telling this story. Did you get any sense of how the military sees afghanistan at the ground level . Because we know what the generals are telling the president. Yeah. Which i am not sure is always completely reflective of what is going on. Thats my point. It is the story you heard from soldiers at the level that you talked to different from the stories you think the president hears from the generals who talk to him or talk to chairman of joint chiefs or secretary of defense. There are two schools of thought, one of them is, and this is from, you know, thousands of conversations with hundreds of troops ranging from privates to lets limit it to the Lieutenant Colonel level. Or captain, one school of thought is, they dont want us there, there is nothing we can do. Our presence is now doing more harm than good. Which i think is starting to become a prove prevalent view among some policy makers that we have been there long enough that it is actually now bad, they are turning against us because of all of the civilians that have been killed and they dont want us there. There is another school of thought that court insurgency is possible, it is achievable you can bond these people to their government and we can leave this country a stronger, safer place and a place where the taliban and where al qaeda or al qaeda like group will not be able to find safe haven. But that second group is in the minority. I think the most, for the most part the people i talk to, and with some honorable exceptions, think that there is nothing more you can do, you can train the afghan troops, and then get out, and but there is not much more you can do. Rose this book is called the outpost, untold story of american central lohr, thank you. Thank you, charlie. Rose pleasure to see you. Back in a moment, stay with us. Rose ian mcewan is here, hhe is the rare breed of novelit add hired by much by the reading public as by the critics, his books sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. They include amsterdam, which would the booker prize and atonement add at that particular timed into a film, his latest novel is called sweet tooth, it is a tale of espionage and love set in 1970s britain, i am pleased to have ian mcewan back at this table, welcome. Thank you. Dedicated to crystal mchitchens who died and your great friend. There is whe when i when i tk about this and you told me this before, the great debate you and hitch had about phillip lark kins poem and the last line, what was the essence of that . The ses the essence really was the arrows falling somewhere out of sight like rain. Hitch on his deathbed pound that line deeply sinister. So this is a poem about a train journey from somewhere like hull to london, the poet watches all of these couples recently married on the train, it is a frail traveling coincidence, they arrive in london and their lives will diverge, and it is as if this is like rain falling across the squares of wheat, the postal district, packed like wheat, to hitch, that was something profoundly sinister, to me, it was neutral, and we had a conversation there and he was two weeks before the end of life, and when i got home, there was an email, dearest ian i have been thinking about what you said, i am pretty sure you are wrong, the argument continues. He wanted to rose . He used a word liquisence. All suggestions of rain to me are sinister here and i think hitch, there is nothing sinister about rain it is life giving. Rose ho how do you use that word. He said the liquisence in itself is sinister. I wanted to write back and said and say how pretentious can you get . There are things you cannot say to a dying man. So i wanted, i was looking, casting around for an interesting little discussion in an afterhours pub in london so i this was actually going on that week so i imported it. Tell me about serena. Serena graduates, serena, frume, rhymes with plume, she came with a poor degree with mathematics and has an affair with an older man and leads to her joining mi 5 which is our Intelligence Organization and it gets called into what we called the cultural cold war and i draw up a list of ten academics, journalist writers that they favor because they are in general promoting the open society, skeptical about the soviet union and so on, and serena is sent down to coax a young novelist to see if he would like to give up his teaching job and have a yearly stipend from this Art Foundation which is a front organization, and this being a spy novel they have to fall in love so that is really at least that is the setup. Rose why