Originally, the Chinese publisher (Beijing U Press) sent me long list of proposed deletions, basically all direct shots at Communist Party, all mentions of the Taiwan issue, and all references to North Korea and Iran. Then there were the cuts every timeI dealt with China as a strong enemy image for the Pentagon.

My offer back was to slice the CCP and Taiwan cuts to the bare word minimum and reject all the rest.

The Chinese counteroffer?

Okay to my offer, with disclaimer in book saying these ideas are my own, and not reflective of the publisher.

A reasonable compromise, I thought.

So the Chinese edition of PNM is a go.

On the road tonight. Spend day at Fort Monroe in Hampton VA, not far from Norfolk, at Training and Doctrine Command of the Army (TRADOC, "Where Tomorrow's Victories Begin"). Good afternoon (3 hours) with the Futures Center guys (2 of four division heads) and then almost an hour with Scotty Wallace, the 4-star who was ground force commander on the sweep up to Baghdad.

Signed one book (PNM) for a senior guy at TRADOC, who pointed out how marked up the copy was. "Shows we use it here," he grinned.

[BTW, when I was at Quantico last week, I got a brief from the Marine future concepts guys and the center of the brief featured a comparison of many conflict/threat/operational databases with the Core-Gap map. Pretty cool to be confronted with while working as magazine writer.]

I was suffering through the day with an onset of a cold. Bought some Alka-Seltzer at BWI, but ended up brain dead at day's end.

Will finish my story blogs in the morning.