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The Marines gave me a really strong sense of discipline and a work ethic that kicks in at my job.

Historically, war journalists have embedded themselves with one side, which means the greatest threat comes from the clearly delineated enemy of that side.

However, the combination of civil resistance, of large-scale mass activities and strikes, with a certain degree of revolutionary violence, could provoke a crisis in the enemy's camp that would ultimately lead to essential changes.

I was a pretty angry kid, and I got into military history largely as a way to vent my own anger. As I got older it narrowed down to a more specific focus on individual violence. I'm just trying to understand where it came from.

Once Iraq became a hot bed for kidnapping, reporters had to use every kind of trick they could manage to avoid it. This included chase cars, security men for more prosperous agencies and networks, and GPS signals on satellite phones that could pinpoint the journalist's locations.

The Iraq war fueled distrust of the press from both sides.

My whole life experience feeds into my writing. I think that must be true for every writer. Clearly the Army and combat were major influences; just the same, you need to understand that many of the writers we have now couldn't load a revolver.

History demonstrates that previous military drawdowns invited aggression by our enemies. After World War I, America drew down forces until the U.S. Army had fewer than 100,000 men in uniform. That weakness invited Nazi aggression in Europe and the imperial Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.

I was a war correspondent. I've watched great people crumble under pressure and make bad decisions.

I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination.