Franks discusses his relationship with President George W. My great regret in doing this is that my wife Cathy [Cathryn Franks] was going to come and participate. Actually, that would have been not a moral support issue but rather very beneficial. One of the characteristics of Bush 43 that you will notice from talking to people and from reading my book is that she spent a great deal of time traveling with me.
That was not by accident and that was not based on our relationship as much as it was based on the notion that we see every day in the media, and that is an absence of appreciation in the West for the Middle East, and in the Middle East of the ways of the West.
I actually had lots of discussions with 43 about that and he never questioned it. She would get off the airplane first, and she would walk by my side everywhere we went. We did that for years all over the Middle East. She is still very well known over there. She was in fact an unrecorded piece of the strategy that we see an absence of today; that is, to spread appreciation and to enrich understanding of who we really are as people.
That was an item of discussion. That is a fascinating point. That was a deliberate move on your part? In fact, there are all kinds of subliminal messages in that book that you have lying in front of you.
Kabul, Afghanistan was not well settled and peaceful at that time. I took her with me to the inauguration. It was a memorable event for a lot of reasons not important to this history. It was interesting to see the reaction of Afghans to an American civilian going through metal detectors and whatnot. Literally, in the palace on that day, the toilets were overflowing; there was no infrastructure in Afghanistan at that time.
