Diane Rehm was their first broadcast appearance. Stephen Walt says they waited three months because they wanted the paper to be absorbed first as ideas, without having the discussion personalized to "John and Steve, rather than what we wrote." Enough time has passed. "Now it's time for us to start talking more openly about it."

Just one statement the authors made the other day. Responding to Dennis Ross's assertion that it's fine that these issues are discussed, they should be debated, Mearsheimer pointed out that the paper couldn't be published in the U.S. mainstream media, and Walt pointed out that they've paid a price for bringing this up. Just about every friend who has talked to him about the paper has said, "You're never going to work in Washington." It wasn't Walt's lifetime ambition to work in Washington, he said, and he isn't complaining about his position in life. "But I find it interesting that that is so frequently the reaction, that this has made us compete pariahs. Quite remarkable."