"washington post" shared part of gates' new book. from what we read gates' dumps on -- >> you know the pentagon is always getting attention. remember bob gates was always seen as a team player and someone who demanded loyalty from his own people, now shocking revelations about what he felt about the president. let me get to a couple of them for you. in the book mr. gates said the president regarding afghanistan doesn't believe in his own strategy and doesn't consider the war to be his. for him it is all about getting out. gates goes on to say that early

in the administration, quoting again suspicion and distropical storm of senior military officers by senior white house officials became a big problem for me. remember, van, this is a man who signed orders every week while he was secretary of defense sending troops off to war. his public persona was such that certainly he expressed his views somewhat. he was somewhat candid but not the level of criticism that we are seeing fired directly at president obama and other members of the white house staff. thank you very, very much. so much for bipartisanship. president obama in my view put a republican in his cabinet and the guy doesn't get out the door before he starts working on the tell all hyperemotional memoir. i want to say it is almost

unheard of for a cabinet member to engage in this level of betrayal against a sitting president. and it is this kind of back stabbing in my view that makes it impossible for the two parties to work together in this town and in my view robert gates should be ashamed of himself. >> aren't you a little worried by what he wrote? >> i can't give credit or credibility to what he wrote if he felt this strongly he should have said something to the the president to his face. he runs out the door and writes a book and puts in public for money what he should have told the president to his face. >> so you write it off? >> he has no credibility in my view. >> we are going to pursue that in the next few minutes. lawrence carb who supports the foreign policy and a critic of the policy. i want to ask you larry, because

you have been around for a long time in various positions. if gates is anywhere close to accurate that the president's real view all along was to not trust petraeus and not trust our allies in afghanistan and really want to get out, then doesn't it bother you that an awful lot of young men and women went there to risk their lives? if the president was that committed wouldn't the country been better off to have gotten out of it? >> obama inherited a mess because bush refused the demands. if you read the book, he talks about the fact -- don't ask the troops. >> when obama came in he gave them more troops as he said in

the campaign and then when the military said it is not enough he gave more, when he announced it he said until 2009. he asked them. the military can you turn it around by then and they said yes. and then they started leaking things to the press. general mccrystal goes over and gives a speech in europe at the international institute of strategic studies criticizing obama. ask then petraeus leaked it and said he doesn't like the fact that there is a day to withdraw. obama said that can you get it done by the end of 2011 and they said yes. >> i appreciate that history and that background. as for right now today with this kind of, i think, top level betrayalal on the part of a former cabinet member, how can anybody take this guy seriously? he apparently does not tell george bush the truth about what

he thinks and does not tell the president of the united states and keeps a diary. do you take this guy seriously at all? >> i would say, yes. as someone who writes for a living i admire people who write. i think it is good that former cabinet ministers write. most of them do not write well. >> and most of them do not write against a sitting president that is still there commanding troops in the field. don't you think he should wait until the president he was serving is done with his term of office? you're not shocked by this at all? this is outrageous. >> the book will stand or fall on its own. if he is selling the truth let the truth win out. i don't think the president of the united states should be scared of the truth. if it is not truthful then we will have vivid discussion of where mr. gates got things

wrong. i remember when he published his first memoir it wasn't a great read but a good read. it had a lot of details and took on the agency and took on the clandestine agency. i had many disagreements with mr. gates. >> a point of view about what is coming out so far? >> i haven't seen anything in the "washington post" piece you would consider surprising. >> i think he thought both wars were bad. i think he was pretty intent on getting the united states out of both of them and getting them out of the united states and reducing america's global foot print. >> again, i think that's wrong. he called iraq ahead of time a dumb war. during the campaign he kept

talking about afghanistan is the war we need to fight. before he even met with the chiefs to look at the strategy he basically doubled the number of troops. and then after they fired mckeernen without checking with him basically then they brought in a new commander. when you bring in a new commander he asked for more troops. and then obama said i will. they leaked the number that he had asked. to me, i would have fired gates right then when the stuff showed up in the press. they asked for 40 more. he ended up giving them 70,000 more troops and then said can you turn it around in two years? i don't want another vietnam is what he said. >> and thank goodness the president had that view. >> this is what i don't understand aboutt where we are not just with obama but the situation. if this is a war worth fighting

then it is a war we should probably win. karzai regime will collapse at some point. pakistan has been sucked into the mess. just as we are watching al qaeda is -- you have to at some level back up and say beyond partisan politics and leaks and books and things if this was the right place to fight, if obama said iraq is wrong and afghanistan is right then shouldn't the question be under what circumstance can a stable afghan regime dominate then we are not going to get there. we have imposed political deadlines for political reasons. >> karzai picked 2014. that wasn't us. that is him. just like iraq picked the 2011. the real question we keep trying to lead troops there and he won't agree to give them immunity. >> those dates really aren't correct. the president could have been

much more assertive than iraq. larry and i have had this debate many times. i argue the iraq more was more important than the afghan war. the president certainly has given sentiment that he wants to withdraw from the middle east. i think that is crystal clear. >> well, you say withdraw from the middle east. i think the american people are tired of these land wars that bush blundered us into. gates was supposed to have been brought in to try to fix what bush did. obama gave him a chance to continue the work and the way he is then thanked for that opportunity to serve his country is with this betrayal. one thing we have to look at, here is an admission of a complete derelection of duty on the part -- i never confronted obama directly over what i as well as secretary of state hillary clinton saw as the

determination that the white house tightly control every aspect of national security policy. in other words, here is a man whose responsibility it is to all of the troops according to him sees too much control at the white house level and never raises it with the president of the united states until now. now, you have been in the cia. you understand the impact of the morale of troops around the world and people who work in this field, doesn't this strike you as vis rating the credibility of robert gates going forward? >> no. without being there it is difficult to assess why secretary gates didn't do this or that. just assessing his personality mr. gates struck me as being an old-fashioned wasp which means he is not prone to sort of publicly flailing his criticisms. >> until now. did he change ethnicity with the book?

>> he is out of office. he should say what he wants. i don't know. i would have preferred that mr. gates perhaps have been more forceful in his criticisms early on. i have to read the book to get a better explanation. when we get back i will describe what gates says about clinton and biden. if gates is right it would disqualify both of them. [ male announcer ] this is the story of the dusty basement at 1406 35th street the old dining table at 25th and hoffman. ...and the little room above the strip mall off roble avenue. ♪ this magic moment it is the story of where every great idea begins. and of those who believed they had the power to do more. dell is honored to be part of some of the world's great stories. that began much the same way ours did. in a little dorm room -- 2713. ♪ this magic moment

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welcome back. in the crossfire lawrence carb. this afternoon excerpts from a brand new book by bob gates leaked creating a sensation here in washington and potentially effecting the 2016 race for president. two of the more amazing

revelations concern joe biden and hillary clinton. gates writes that vice president biden, quote, has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades, end quote. he praises secretary clinton in many ways but notes a conversation in which she said she opposed the iraq troop surge in 2007 for blatantly political reasons. the question i ask you is don't you find -- assuming gates is not making it up it is a little disconcerting on an issue of life and death when we go to risk the lives taking on a tactical political decision. when did she say this? how did she say this? was this given in confidence? it is easy to say she said this. do we have the notes of the

meeting? >> why does it matter? >> we don't know if it is true. just like you said biden has been wrong for 40 years. biden was right about the b balkins. does he have the notes? >> would you dismiss the book? >> i would. he goes to the navy league and says why do we have 11 carriers and nobody has more than one? he goes to west point and says any secretary of defense that advocates large land armys into the middle east. he gets asked didn't you recommend sending troops. he took it back. he tries to be on both sides of the issue. he was upset when reagan started

negotiating with gorbachev. he was wrong about osama bin laden which according to what i read he does admit in the book that he didn't want to go in and get him. >> i think that if gates wants to come forward and start analyzing everybody else's record he is going to get a lot of that. one of the most peculiar, bizarre criticisms apparently in the president is the president had misgivings about the war in afghanistan. surprise. the vast majority of the american people shared those misgivings. the fact the president was in touch with the feelings of most americanst that this war was not in our interest anymore, why he was elected. do you think it is a fair criticism of president obama that he is getting us out of these land wars? >> well, i suspect president obama wasn't terribly in favor

of the afghan war in 2008. the issue is his constancy. i am very much in favor of the iraq war and afghan war, so was hillary clinton and most democrats in the senate. i think the president has been a little jaden spaced. i think it is hard to look at the record and not have very strong suspicions that the president chose this dichotomy between the bad war and good war for political reasons. i agrew with newt. if hillary clinton did back away from the surge for political reasons it is disconcerting because she was in favor of the iraq war. if she was going against it strictly because of politics then that is, i think, a fairly damming note. >> let me ask. i'm glad you are here because both of you are experts and both have been operators in the business of national security.

it strikes me that far beyond this book and far beyond president obama we now have huge problems growing. you have al qaeda growing in strength and fundamentalest forces in syria and egypt shaking and iraq beginning to problems in pakistan, which is very dangerous. and you have the iranians. doesn't it strike you that on a bipartisan basis we need to have fundamental reenforcement of the middle east in a real effort. what are our interests? >> i think we do. one of the big changes is we're going to be less and less dependent on oil from that part of the world. remember the first gulf war and jim baker. why are you guys going in there?

it's about oil. and anything like that. now it's going to be different. we're not going to have to treat the saudis as a gas station anymore. basically we're going to -- >> you think that because under president obama we have increased energy production so much. >> what happened after 9/11, it wasn't we got carried away. we thought we would reform the world and create democracy. you remember people saying the way jerusalem is through baghdad. and people were saying we can't take care of iraq and then we can go to iran. i think we got carried away. the key issue we have is the nuclear weapons. that's very critical. but in terms of who runs egypt or who runs tunisia, it's much

different. chuck hagel was at georgetown. i asked him was there anything obama could have done to keep more troops? and he said no, bush. signed an agreement to get out. we're going to keep it. >> what's your view of this? the speaker is doing a good job of trying to pull back. let's look at the bigger picture. what's your view? i think this president inherited a mess from bush. everybody who is republican wants to talk about reagan. i'm happy to talk about bush as well. i think he's been doing a good job. i think most americans are glad we're pulling back. do you think the president is fundamentally off course in any way? >> yeah. he inherited a fairly decent situation in iraq. i have to say i disagree completely with larry completely about energy. i don't think the we kbet.

to be free. you realize how dependent our l allies are. i don't think the united states gets to run from the middle east. so i think you also ought to be aware that 9/11 wasn't all that long ago. the odds that the united states are going to get hit for another massive terrorist strike because of what's happened in the middle east. >> we can talk about this more when we get back. next we'll have the final question for both our guests. also we want you at home to way in on the fireback question. is bob gates' decision to write a tell-all book an act of courage or betrayal? tweet us using #crossfire. we'll give you the results after this break. and it feels like your lifeate revolves around your symptoms, ask your gastroenterologist about humira adalimumab.

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we're back. now it's time for our final question. >> the one that hit me after looking, do you think senior officials should sign a contract not to write during the period of the administration they are serving? >> i don't think they should sign a contract, but i think it's understood that you just don't do that. after all, it's a great privilege for the person who has been elected to put you into this job. i always got the feeling gates thought he was doing the president a favor by staying on. and that is absolutely the wrong thing.

you owe your loyalty to that man or woman in the white house. . if you can't handle it, you leave. but gates wanted to have it both ways. >> i agree with that 100%. the name of the book is "duty." he had an obligation to tell the truth and discretion when he left. you have been apart of this world for a long time. what mess average did do you think it sends to the troops around the world when they find the secretary of defense had this level of misgivings about the orders they were getting from him? >> again, without reading the book, it's difficult to give a good example, but some focus may be upset he wasn't more forceful in expressing his views. >> thank you very much. thank both of our guests tonight. hopefully we'll have you back very, very soon. >> go to facebook or twitter to weigh in on our question. is bob gates' decision to write a tell-all book an act of

courage or betrayal? 55% so far say betrayal. >> the debate will continue online at cnn.com/crossfire as well as on facebook and twitter. >> join us tomorrow for another edition of "crossfire." "erin burnett out front" starts right now. good evening. i'm don lemon. the president doesn't believe in his own strategy. that's one part of a scathing new critique of president obama from a former member of his own cabinet former secretary of defense bob gates slams the president's leadership and commit t