>> rose: welcome toç the broadcast. we begin this evening again with afghanistan and richard engel, chief foreign correspondent for nbc news who reports frequently from afghanistan. >> for the second time in less than 24 hours, this outpost has come under attack. some of the incoming rounds were so close we could hear the cracks overhead. now they're putting out suppressive fire to try and push back the attackers. they've also called in mortar fires. i don't personally think the nation building, winning hearts and minds is ever going to work. >> rose: why not? >> because i've gone out on the patrols and i've seen the afghan just look at the americans like they're martians. what do you want? what are you doing here?

in iraq, the iraqis came rushing out and spoke, many of them, in english to u.s. troops sayingç "help us, i want to emigrate to canada." they wanted something. so the americans said "okay, give us information, quid pro quo here." the afghans don't want anythingç they just look at them and wait until they left and in some cases put i.e.d.'s on the road and say "get out of here." >> rose: also, our conversaon with max cleland, he lost two arms and a leg in vietnam. came home and became a united states senator and chief of the veterans administration. he talks about his experience and his views on afghanistan to want. >> we got into counterinsurgency by accident. because we were there in afghanistan after whom? after bin laden and his cadre. they went across the mountains into pakistan. they're not in afghanistan anymore! and so we have to shift our purpose and our political and military objective to going after al qaeda.

not building up our resources in afghanistan. pwhich i think is a dead end, that's vietnam. >> rose: a program note. because of our focus on afghanistan this week, my interview with bryan ross and with michael moore will be seen at a later time. tonight,ç richard engel and max cleland next. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. ç

>> rose: we begin again this evening with a focus on afghanistan because president obama is facing the most critical foreign policyç decisn of his presidency. he met today with his national security team after talks with congressional leaders yesterday, the president said that he would not substantially reduce u.s. forces or shift the mission to just hunting terrorists. he also said he wanted to dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving afghanistan. some in congress and the administration want to narrow our counterterror strategy. that approach would maintain the current troop levels but step up strikes against al qaeda. general stanley mcchrystal, the top commander on the ground, has proposed a counterinsurgency strategy that would require up to 40,000 additional troops. this day marks eight years to the day when the afghan war started in 2001.

therefore i'm pleased to haveç richard engel, chief foreign correspondent for nbc news, join me. he's reported on the soldiers of viper company. they manned a remote base in one of afghanistan's most violent regions. here's a look at hisç documentary. >> the troops can see the taliban's muzzle flashes. >> we've got two elements that are firing on viper 17 from the high ground to their north and northwt, break. >> reporter: powell calls in mortar and 2,000 pound bombs to destroy the taliban position. the bombs and mortars are falling simultaneously on both of the mountains. but suddenly it goes tragically wrong. an american mortar hits the safe house where the soldiers are positioned. >> 266. >> it's a direct hit with terrible consequences for the men of restrepo.

(screaming)ç we can hear their screams federal reserve a few hundred yards away. >> rose: i am pleased to have richard engel back at this table. welcome. >> thank you very much, it's a pleasure toe here as always. >> rose: we'll talk about this documentary, this is similar to the place where the attack took place over the week wednesday the death of eight, nine marine >> very similar to that. this was an outnortheast is quite small in the mountains. you have f you understand the battle, you have to understand the geography. in the south it's flat and mostly desert and there are a loof roads. so marine cans travel around in big vehicles and the killer are i.e.d.s, we're talking about kandahar, helmand, southern afghanistan. they never see the taliban. i was with a unit recently, three soldiers were killed in

theç this-period, the last 24 hours i was with them, we didn't hear a shot, we didn't see anybody and you just have soldiers walking in each other's footsteps to try and avoid these i.e.d.s. the east, very differentç terrn it's mountains, the hindu kush. so in order to protect this area you have these tiny little lily pad like outposts manned by sometimes as few as a soldiers. i've seep one tiny little advanced outpost that had four soldiers on them. i won't say where it is because i don't want to put anyone at risk. but they are manning a few tiny bases. and here you have ambush attacks you have to taliban or other fighters. there's the hick canny network, that's a strong group in the area. hikani. and what happened in this latest attack is 200 some have said even more than 200 fightersç massed and then basically

overran the base. >> rose: and they had no option for reinforcement or anything else. >>his wanothe first time that a little outpost like this... and the u.s. militaryç never likes to say "overrun" because there's an emotional aspect to that and they don't want to encourage copycat attacks. i know of at least three in the last year or so similar type incidents where the... i think you can say the security of this little base has been compromised where there were fights inside the outer wire. now, three is not a lot, but three is still... is quites theg those outpost... willit change? are their recommendations from the military to change that? >> there are many recommendations to change that. and... includeing from general mcchrystal. he says why bother having these tiny outposts in the middle of no place defending a valley where very few people live and the original theory to having outposted in valleys like theç one that was overrun or like the one featured in this documentary

was that you would fight them in the mountains, fight the enemies. and these soldiers call them taliban but they're all sorts of different fighters. fight them in the mountains so they stay outjt populated areas. kind of like our national security strategy. fight them over there so we don't fight them over here. the problem is we were fighting them over there in the mountains and fighting them in the cities and you can't resupply them. a lot of these... it can take days on foot before you get there because the mountains and valleys are so steep. the helicopters to come in have to get very close to the sides of the peaks, where they can get shot at. this is what happened to the soviets. they draw the helicopters into these tight canyons and valleys and then they shoot at the helicopters. so they're difficult to defend, they're difficult to resupply. if there's an emergency, it's difficult to get medevac in and out. >> rose: in the winter they're freezing cold. and so there are recommendations to try and... to remove some of these and focus on the population centers andç basicay surrender terrain, surrender the

mountains, the no-man's-land, to the hard-liners. >> rose: what do the soldiers want? >> the soldiers on a little base like this, they areç happy because they have a mission. and their mission is very clear. they're not sitting around sort of thinking about their role in life and in society. they have a clear mission, they are there to defend the outpost and protect the person to their left and their right. so when they're there, it's clear. but the problem you're having with the soldiers-- and i think you're seeing this across the military-- is too many deployments. now their families are falling apart. the divorce rates are going up. suicide rates are going up. so i think they want a break. when they're there, they're focused, they're fighting. but then they need a little bit of a break. >> rose: stretched too thin. stretched too thin. >> you're asking a lot of... particularly of some of these officers who ef if you're a captain,ç major level, lieutent colonel level, back, another

deployment, another deployment. i don't know how many deployments a marriage lasts but three? four? and then it's real hard after that. >> rose: you said to me as waç walked in the studio "things are going badly even in kabul." >> kabul... kabul is the oddest place. it feels colonial now. you walk around and kabul you can go out, you can go to restaurants, there's bars, there's quite a unique expat community there of aid workers and journalists and mercenaries and "star wars" kind of scenario. and you see the... some u.n. workers or international aid agencies come into one of the restaurants. i was just there. they come in with white sweaters carrying tennis rackets with big s.u.v.s parked outside. and i'm thinking this is another area with colonialism all again. siddiqui, could you bring the car around? and it's a very odd place. whereas just outside of kabulçn the wilderness, to continue the colonialist model, the villages

e burning and the natives are in revolt. so it's a situation where youç have a surreal existence in kabul in the eye of the storm and in the rest of the situation is... the rest of the country is really falling under foot. >> rose: one argument that comes up regardless of which side you're in term n terms of strategy is the one thing you do not want to be per perceived of is an occupier. >> well, you are an occupier. you cannot be perceived as anhingut an occupier. >> rose: the afghans perceive the united states as an occupier and therefore resent the united states presence or the nato presence? >> too much time has passed. we would almost be better off starting from scratch but we can't start from scratch. eight years have passed. eight years of broken promises, eight years of watching the security situation get worse, eight years of supporting corrupt war lords an@ç bringing them to power, now tolerating another very problematic election that just happened this

summer. so there's not a lot of trust left from the iraqi people toward the americans.... >> rose: iraqi? >>ç afghan people, excuse me. people in the united states seem to have forgotten about the war in afghanistan and are now waking up to it. in afghanistan they never forgot about it. they saw the soldiers come, they saw them not doing very much. >> rose: and so go deeper in terms of the hostility towards americans. >> there is not open hostility. americans could walk around kabul and... i walk around kabul and have no problem. going shopping and there's not hostility, you don't see rage in people's eyes. there's a feeling that you didn't do anything, what's your point of being here? in the south and among the pashtun population, that's... and i guess you could call the hard line air glass the south and east, yes, there's a real sense of anger because that's a war zone. many people there have been caught up actively in theç conflict. in kabul there's just a sense of "i don't know what you're doing here, i don't know why you're still here after eight years.

you didn't do any of the things you promised. you're a liar more than anç occupier." >> rose: are they prepared to accept the taliban returning to power? >> no, no. absolutely not. nobody wants the taliban. 6% of the people want the taliban to return to power, which is basically nobody. they don't, however, see the taliban as an immediate threat. and this is the big difference between iraq and afghanistan. the surge happened in iraq. and when i say "iraq" i really mean iraq. the surge happened two years ago in iraq and it was... it was a gamble but the idea of we're going protect the people in iraq and we're going change the counterinsurgency strategy. we'll protect the people, we'll let the people taste what stability feels like and tastes like and then they'll like it and try and preserve it for themsees. that was theç theory and it worked because there was a civil war going on in afghanistan... in iraq. there were people getting killed on the streets of baghdad. we were stepping over bodies

every single day. in afghanistanç, there is not that situation. the taliban don't bother most people. most of the attacks that are carried out on a daily basis are aimed at nato forces and u.s. forces and afghan government forces. if you're an average person living in the... in afghanistan, the taliban doesn't bother you. so for american forces to come in and say "we are here to protect you," well, what from what who? the taliban? well, the taliban don't bother me. actually, sir, you, the american, are the one who's targeted so if you could please leave your house right now because your presence here is putting me at risk. >> rose: then i'm confused. what would they have the situation be? what do the afghans want? >>he afghans would like a more stable government. they would want a more clean government, one that's not so riddled in corruption.ç they think that the international community-- u.s., nato-- has tolerated a great deal of corruption. >> rose: are they right? >> yes, they are absolutely

right. the corruption piece of this is enormous.ç and it's not just on the afghan side, by the way, it's on the contracting side, it's on the official side. eight years have passed. what has been accomplished? i think something like $300 billion has been spent. where did it go? >> rose: what's the answer? where did it go? >> well, a lot of it got lost in contracting. a lot of it got lost in subcontracting. there are countless stories. there's stories of an american arms supplier that was selling arms-- and this has been documented-- weapons, a.k.-47 rounds for an exple, and there's lots of stories like this, to the afghan national army. the rounds turned out to be coming from china, where sold through eastern europe, and the person running this company was a basically a shadow company being run out of the united states out of a small office inç miami. and there were tens of millions of dollars of contracts and they were selling faulty chinese ammunition channeled through

eastern europe. and this isç just one of many stories. >> rose: lay out for us what mcchrystal's strategy is. >> it is the surge in iraq. the idea of we're going to give the people stability, let them taste stability and they're going to come and ask us for more. so we're going to defend the people and win hearts and minds and we're going to go out to the villages and say "we are here to help you. help us help you." and after enough stability sort of germinates on the ground, it will blossom into a stable country. that's the concept. that's what worked in iraq because-- as i was saying before-- there was a civil war in iraq. iraqis would come out into the streets and beg americans for stability. "please help us, i just received a death threat under my door. i'm aç sunni and i've been kicd out of my neighborhood by shiites." that dynamic isn't happening in afghanistan and that's why i think this strategy is going to face serious challenges. because the afghan people aren't

asking for protection. so ifç the americans want to protect them more than the afghans want our protection, how do you provide it to them. >> rose: what's the alternative strategy that might work? >> well, i think the idea of... which is being floated around right now, just sitting back on your bases and doings a few laser pinpoint drone attacks against al qaeda leaders, that sounds great, i don't know how that would possibly work on the ground. >> rose: well, some say one consequence to that will be what general mcchrystal was worried about, it will turn the civilian population against you because you cannot avoid civilian casualties. >> rose: >> and you don't know what you're hitting. and this is something mcchrystal knows about. this is what he did for a living he was a black ops guy. he specialized in killing... maybe that sounds vulgar, but hç specialized in targeting high-value targets and eliminating them with drones and with other things like that. that's what he did. and you don't think if he could do that now and not put his people at risk he wouldç do th?

he's the best person in the united states who does this kind of operation. and he says you can't do it. you need to have the intelligence. you need to have the people on the ground. you need to have eyes and ears close to the ground otherwise just sitting on a base operating a joy stick you don't know who you're going to get. but i didn't answer your question. >> rose: no. >> so i do... i think... the other option is... so i'm not... i don't personally think the nation building... winning hearts and minds is ever going to work. i really don't. >> rose: why not? >> because i've gone out on the patrols and i've seen the afghans just look at the americans like they're martians. what do you want? what are you doing here? in iraq, the iraqis came rushing out and smoke many of them in english to u.s. troops saying "help us. "help us. 0pwant to i" they wanted something. so the americans said "okay, give us information, we'll quid pro quo here." the afghans don't want anything from the american troops. they just look at them and wait until thç leave and in some

cases put i.e.d.s in the road and just say "get out of here." so that... i don't think there's going to be a connection there. >> rose: so should we leave? >> i don't think you can leave right now. you have troops... eventually, yes. i think you should definitely leave. but you have to form some sort of honorable exit. >> rose: how do you achieve an honorable exit? >> you may have to in the short term send in more troops. >> rose:'s the only way, you think, to achieve an honorable exit? >> maybe. >> rose: up to 40,000. >> maybe. they need reinforcements. the taliban has mow me tum right now. >> rose: why do they have momentum? why are they wining? >> nato. nato failed. it's really very, very simple. president obama sent in 20,000 troops. and, again, geography. i wish we had a map. i'm map crazed. he sent in those troops. so inç the east in the mountais you have u.s. troops in these little outposts. in the south the desert, kandahar, you had american troops also, some brits and canadians. they were having a tough time. 20,000ç extra troops went in.

they pushed down mostly into the south, which is the taliban stronghold. so what happened to the taliban militants who were down there? they moved to other places. particularly the west and the north. the americans were in the east and the south, they moved further into the south. they dispersed into the west and the north where italians and germans had been. and the italian and german troops had been doing very, very little. there are many, many reports about germans and italians not leaving their bases, not being pro active, not having the same mission. they were there as peacekeepers not as fighting a war or a counterinsurgency. so the taliban was able to spread out into many other parts of the country and in some cases gain new recruitsç and they got bolder and they got bolder and they got bolder. so now you're in a situation where you have the taliban moved out of their traditional areas of support into some of these nato areasç and doing quite we. and they've got a taste for it

and they've gotten better. eight years have passed. >> rose: and they've got better equipment. >> the equipment's fine. >> rose: where is it coming from? >> you can buy anything. a lot of equipment isgetting stolen as it comes in across the boarder from pakistan. the way it works is it's almost like a blind lottery. you pay between $5,000 and $10,000 and you buy a container. these containers that have shipped through contractors again, middlemen, that come through pakistan and the... you don't know what's in the container. maybe it opens up and it's a container full of toilet paper and then okay, bad choice. or you open it up and it's full of flak jackets and bullets, then you had a great deal. or it's full of equipment, sensitive equipment. so the smuggling routes are plentiful and thoseç convoys are.... >> rose: most of the drug trade money goes to theal been? >> a lot of it does. and there's a large number there. and it goes to the russian mafia. most of the drugs are grown in the southç and then are exportd through the north through the central asian republics and then

by the russian must have ya and then end up in europe, that's kind of the route of the heroin. >> rose: what's the potential of the afghan security forces? >> the afghan army is good. i've been impressed with them. i was out with them on an independent patrol, just me and the afghan army a few days ago. they were good. they knew what they were doing. the weapons were clean. they were in uniform. >> rose: are there enough of them? >> no, there just aren't any of them. they're barely... they told me in kabul they need five times as many. that was the problem. >> rose: has the u.s. sold you that or the afghans? >> no, the afghan brigade commander. >> rose: how long would it take them to get to that point? >> maybe two or three years. >> rose: because that's central to mcchrystal's strategy. >>ç it is, absolutely. the afghan troops that are there like i said, they're good. there just aren't nearly enough and the afghan police they need to probably start from scratch again. >> rose: what is your take on the sanctuary in pakistan?ç >> it's shrinking. the pakistanis have taken... and i don't think they're getting enough credit for it, frankly.

the last several months the pakistanis have been quite aggressive in pushing into particularly the northwest frontier province. >> rose: swat valley. >> the swat valley. once they saw taliban at the gates of the city, so to speak, and they got a lot of international pressure, they acted. but they did act. now there's talk about pushing south into waziristan and continuing that offensive. and... they killed masood. >> rose: the leader of the pakistani taliban. >> they're feeding the americans a lot of intelligence. there's a lot of transfer of intelligence going across that border machlt sood. even at a local commander level. masood. it's not just going up general to general. happened in.... >> rose: are they allç pashtun? >> on that side of the boarder? mostly. it's a pashtun problem. it's a pushtun belt. but in pakistan you have other populations but generally it's the pashtun isç the... a lot of people in that country see the war in afghanistan and pakistan see the war on terrorism and the war on al qaeda as a war on the

pashtuns. that's how they see it. it's a nationalist struggle. >> rose: so therefore they're... they do everything they can to support those that they think are nationalists, which are their people they ow? the taliban? >> the border is sort of artificial. people cross and many afghans... pashtuns have lived in afghanistan and lived in pakistan and across the border or back and forth. they consider it one country that's sort of been unand a half rally divided by the duran line. >> rose: but you believe the pakistanis are being serious about a new strategy to go after the sanctuaries and the safe haven and that they will be successful if they keep it up? >> i don't know if they'll be successful but they are being serious. i]'s much different than, say, in 2006 when they were finally signing deals and giving them autonomy or even just last year when they said, all right, take the swat valley, it's yours. no, you're seeing aç different approach. >> rose: which is we are militarily going to come in. >> we're not going to tolerate it. >> rose: do you hear much talk about al qaeda?

>> this is something i hear more talk about here. this distinction, well, we're going to not worry about al qaeda and we're going to... we're not going to worry about the taliban but focus on al qaeda. >> rose: so-called biden alternative. >> i don't know what the difference is. >> rose: they're not one in the same, though. i'm asking. >> i've metal ban commanders to who say to me, we're all muslims we all have the same cause. it's not that different. >> rose: but the one thing they say is the taliban has no global agenda. >> this taliban commander said he would love to carry on an attack in new yorkç if he coul. told me that new york city specifically we're talking about. >> rose: he was a native afghan? >> native afghan. >> rose: didn't come from somewhere else? >> we smoke in air back, he studied at aç madrassa in pakistan like many of them do and perhaps he had been influenced by al qaeda's ideology. but the idea that this is just a... maybe taliban was a

provincial group in the original days of mullah omar in kandahar, but it's not anymore. they have seen the world. they've been fighting international forces for a long time. >> rose: because general jones has said that they don't see that the threat of al qaeda in afghanistan is... the taliban is growing but al qaeda they seem to make a distinction. >> yeah, well that's great. >> rose: you don't see it? >> i don't see it. >> rose: you think taliban has bought into a more global... more glebl jihadist mind-set? >> these are artificial distinctions. these are distinctions made by someone who has to createç a powerpoint slide. those are taliban, those are al qaeda. it's not that... you don't have a membership card. the organizations in north africa that ar supporting of suicide attacks and would love to carry on attack elsewhere, al qaeda wannabes, well, if they wannabe, then they kind of are. i don't know how you make these distinctions and the taliban...

i guess you could call it the afghan branch of al qaeda but they've been internationalized. >> rose: the president has said in the last couple of days... and secretary gates has said the same thing and secretary clinton has said the same thing. "we are not having a conversation in washingtonbout leaving afghanistan. we're trying to develop a strategy so we can then make decisions as to how we can best implement that strategy and whether it's more troops, whether it's the same level of troops, we're not talking about a writedown of troops. >> i think that's directed at pakistan.... >> rose: to say to the pakistan... otherwise if they're talking about leaving they would lose all support, iç assume, in terms of the afghans, we better make up to the taliban because the americans are leaving. >> how do you tell the pakistani we've been hammering them "you have to go fight the taliban, you have to take theç fight to them. by the way, we're leavi." you can't really do that. >> rose: because the pakistanis were there for the taliban before.

>> well, the pakistanis never saw the taliban as a tremendous threat. it was a cool, it was a convenient tool to have influence in afghanistan. it was only when they started getting the blowback of people who were attacking in islamabad an carrying out attacks in ps and were almost at the gates of the city that they decided you know what? we can't ride this tiger anymore >> rose: are you pessimistic about when you look at the situation on the ground and regardless of whether they add a few more thousand troops or don't or subtract 5,000 or 10,000 troops, i don't hear from you any sense that there's aç real chance at progress. a real chance at anything that would look like success as you had in part in iraq after the surge. >> i think the ideaç is the...s imposing a nation staid state on a state that never had one. if iraq was a central government wanted to be a country, iraqis felt that they were iraqis and they were engaged. afghanistan was... wasn't really

a strong central government most people... the central government never had much control over the outer provinces. and the idea of trying to create some sort of western model that is going to rule afghanistan from the center i think is ultimately a failed project. and that's perhaps why if we're trying to impose a nation state as we understand in the afghanistan through force of arms, carried out by then uniform, most of whom are non-muslim who don't speak the language, i don't see how y're going to do it. >> rose: does your experience in iraq and now your experience in afghanistan and your experience in the region and you speak arabic say to you that any strategy that says we're going to kill allç the taliban is a fail strad ji from the beginning because you cannot win that way because you don't have the resources and you don't the support of the afghans to do that? >> how are you going to... the taliban are part of the people. you can't distinguish between

the two of them. the taliban came from the people. so how do you kill all the taliban. the taliban are the people. so when n.g.o.s and u.s. troops come over there and say "we're here to protect you." well, protect you from what. "we're here to liberate your women." well, we kind of don't want you to do that. >> rose: but they didn't like the taliban. >> they didn't like the taliban but they don't want a bunch of foreigners who have not delivered on their promises telling them how to rule their lives. none of them want the taliban to come back but they don't want.... ,pstates would say "we're here o keep thealiban from coming back." would that resonate? >> yes, people would love that. >> rose: why don't they say that? >> people would love that. that's whey what they're trying to do. >> rose: if you ar[ general mcchrystal, is that what he says? we're here to prevent theal bran from taking over? >> that is what he's trying to sell. but he has a problem. he has a major problem. he says "we are here to prevent the taliban from taking over. " great, i love that. all the afghans love it.

but by the way, what we're giving you as an alternative is the afghan government which has been corrupt and brought in and has no credibility. >> rose: we have nothing we can show them. >> we have nothing to sell. >> rose: and they think we're corrupted by relationship with karzai? >> they think we were corrupted by... and by our action. eight years have passed and, you know, you go to an afghan village and you can't tell the difference. nothing has changed. >> rose: the documentary, the one-hour documentary is called "the tip of the spear" as iç said. it airs on sunday, october 11 at 8:00 p.m. on msnbc. give me a quick sense. this was anpportunity where you spent a year in and out with a group of soldiers...ç >> it's a tightly focused story. it's on one post, one gruf of soldiers. not going in and out but i spent a lot of time with this one particular group of soldiers. we tracked them from when they first arrived to mid-deployment, end of deployment, we saw them in fire fights, we saw them when

a soldier was killed from the unit, that happened unfortunately while we were on one of the patrols. we went and found that soldier's parents. we visited the soldiers once they returned and we see the progression of this unit, how the men have chand over their... over the course of this 12-month in one of the most difficult places you can imagine. >> rose: before we leave i want to show the second clip, this is a fire fight with the taliban, just to give you a sense of what it's like in afghanistan at this out post.ç >> sergeant christopher thompson is wearing a camera on his helmet. as he's recording, so are we. a rarely seen perspectiveç, multiple simultaneous angles inside a fire fight. >> suppress that area. >> suppress! >> reporter: >> the images look like a a video game, but it's deadly

real. >> i'm going in. watch out, i'm going in. >> in 11 months, viper company has been in more than 500 fire fights, an average of more than one of these... >> christ almighty! >> ...everyday. now the experience is paying off they're faster, more precise, and more lethal than when we first met them.ç >> shooting right there! >> fire! >> the soldiers have also learned to block out emotion, focus, and manager their heart rates and adrenaline. theç soldiers fire rockets and grenades. >> we got eyes on. >> they call in air support and more than 40 mortars. the taliban are close. their fire accurate. they've gotten better, too. they've been taking incoming

rounds from at least two positions on this hill top. some of the rounds were bouncing right off these rocks around us. now they're trying to put out as much fire as they can to try and cut off the attackers. but the soldiers fire so much, ammunition is running low. >> slow your rate of fire. conserve that ammo! >> the troops think they kill three or four taliban fighters. >> cease-fire! cease-fire! >> and after an hour, this fire fightç is over. >> rose: what do you fear most about in terms of your own personal safety? >> um, actually, the fire fights aren't so bad. what worries me more is the co.th. it's the i.e.d.s. at least if you're in a fire fight there's some... you know it's coming, you can hear the rounds coming in, you can look... you can hide behind a rock, there's something you can do that at least gives you the illusion of control. in the south, you walk around and you don't know what you're going to step on and this is much more unsettling. it's like being in iraq.

when you were... iraq was similar to southern afghanistan in that it was an i.e.d. fight and you would sit in the back of a humvee and you would think, all right, is this humvee going to blow up? that's worse. the fire fights, you know, you get adrenaline, you're running around, you can hide behind something, that's not as bad as sitting there waiting. >> rose: there a time limit on how long you can do this? >> i don't know. that's a mathematical question. door, when does it open? i hope i can keep doing this for a long time. i do take precautions. i don't.... >> rose: are you based in beirut? where are you based? >> it'sç complicated now i'm spending almost all my time... not almost all my time but the majority of my time in afghanistan. >> rose: this one hour documentary is called "tip of the spear" and it airs on sunday at 8:00 p.m. on msnbc. my thanks, as always, to richard engel. thank you, my friend. good to see you, as always. back in a moment, stay with us.

>> rose: max cleland is here. he is as you know a decorated vietnam war veteran and a former democratic senator from the great state of georgia. he was head of the veterans administration under president jimmy carder. in up, president obama appointed him secretary of the american battle monuments commission. it manages all overseas memorials to american soldiers.ç he has a new book out, it's called "heart of a patriot: how i found courage to survive, vietnam, walter reed, and karl rove." (laughs) i am pleased to have max cleland at this table.ç welcome. >> i'm glad to be here. >> tell me why you decided to write this. >> i did it for me to come to terms with my life. secondly, i'm sharing it with others so that they... especially those that are wounded in war and the families when they come back and try to come to grips with life and find that it's not working out for them in many ways that they

don't give up. that they are able to live one more minute, one more day. because the good lord and the help of friends will ultimately carry us. god does provide. now, that's basically the story. >> rose: the reason people come back and have difficulty because of the psychological or the physical?ç >> once you've been to war, you come back different. you come back different emotionally and spiritually. you may not show it,ou may have hidden wounds. that's what we're trying to get at in many ways.ç we have a number of people wounded in iraq and afghanistan. physically they make it back but then emotionally they will never forget their war. and it will live them w them for the rest of their lives. >> rose: what is it they don't forget? the horror of it? >> they don't forget the horror of it, they don't forget the trauma of it and it lives within their reptile memory, even though they want to forget it. i think you have to come to terms with your life. that you have lost something.

if you lost limbs or a part of your body, it's harder to, but you can deal with that. it's tougher to deal with the hidden wounds. and that is coming to terms with the fact that you went to war and you made it back. you survived. sometimes that in and of itself is a hidden wound. it's called survival guilt. but basically it's whatç do i o now to pick up my life and move on? and that's the real challenging question. a lot of veterans can't answer that affirmatively. they get into drugs, alcoholism and if you getç into that it my lead you to suicide. so the rates of suicide now are rates that we haven't seen since-- hello-- the vietnam war. >> rose: and there's more of that coming out of iraq, i understand, because the capacity to save people on the battlefield is much greater than it's ever been so people come back not dead but wounded because of the miraculous medical facilities. >> that happened with me, too.

except now we're sending youngsters back for their fourth tour and their fifth tour and so forth. you can't do that to a human being. so we have our you will haver inment in our all-volunteer force. and so that's one of the things we have to think about as we encounter the problems of afghanistan andç pakistan. >> rose: so how would that affect a political decision about afghanistan? >> it means to me in my opinion that you've got a swamp and you've got alligators andç normally we're taught if you're up to your rear end in alligators you forget your mission is to drain the swamp. our mission is not to drain the swamp. no congressional authorization for that. but there's plenty powerful congressional authorization after 9/11, almost unanimously in the senate and house, to go after those who came after us. that's the mission. you go after the alligators. that means you focus on killing or capturing osama bin laden, his terrorist cadre, you protect

pakistan's nuclear program and you go after thealiban leadership in pakistan. it's pakistancentric at this point and that does not mean that it's a question of boots on the ground. it means it's a question of intelligence with our nato allies. it means it's a question of using our technology in the air and on the sea to go after theç guys who came after us. >> rose: therefore you're against sending more troops? >> for the purpose of... to afghanistan for the purpose of counterinsurgency. because that mission was never authorized. it was neverç authorized by the congress. counterinsurgency never was. we got into counterinsurgency by accident. because we were there in afghanistan after whom? after bin laden and his terrorist cadre. they went across the mountains into pakistan. they're not in afghanistan anymore! and so we have to shift our purpose and our political and military objective to going after al qaeda. not building up our resources in afghanistan which i think is a

dead end, that's vietnam. >> rose: okay. it's vietnam to send more troops in afghanistan to engage the taliban? >> it is in a counterinsurgency sense in which you have a sanctuary across the border. that is exactly what happened in vietnam. the sanctuaryç was in north vietnam, cambodia, and laos. so i was part of 550,000 troops on the ground in vietnam and what did that get us? nothing.ç so you cannot send good money after bad into afghanistan for the purpose of counterinsurgency. that does mean you have to begin to train the afghans to take over their own country and you have to refocus the american military on killing the alligators. >> rose: so it sounds like you were at one with vice president biden in terms of the alternatives. >> i am. >> rose: go after al qaeda wherever they are. >> that's the focus. that is also the congressional authorization. >> rose: said to be vice president biden's plan.

>> it is, right. it's also the legal basis upon which a president can do this. any president. we certainly this president. >> rose: so you're saying if he wants to send more troops to afghanistan to fight the taliban he does not have the legal basis to do it? >> because counterinsurgency was never the mission.ç it was never particularly authorized because basically there are no al qaeda in the mountains of afghanistan. maybe a hundrgd or so. they're really in pakistan in their sanctuaries. >> rose: so you can support pakistan's efforts to close the border and to go after... >> even if you had a draft there would be riots in the streets. the public is spent now, is a spent bullet in terms of our military because we've been almost eight years now in iraq. and so the public is fed up with all this and secondly the military is pretty much burned out. and so... particularly the army. so where are you going to get 40,000 troops?

you're going to have to tell every governor that you can't have your guard... your army reserve, your national guard and your air guard for five years or so because you've got to go into afghanistan. that ain't gonna work. so you've got to go after theç alligators wherever they are. right now they shifted from afghanistan to pakistan. they're moving into a sudan, into indonesia, maybe the southern part of philippines. you've got to go after them erever they are. right now if you build up afghanistan, they will just go somewhere else. >> rose: this question: the president is now engaged in intense debate and discussion. >> rightfully so. >> rose: at the white house. with members of congress, with members of the military and a range of academic experts. and military experts. do you think before the president makes his decision there ought to be some way to have some kind of national debate about this decision which many people say will be the most important decision of his presidency? >> it is the moss presidency.

>> rose: should there will be a national debate? >> there is a national debate. >> rose: well, is there a national debate taking place or is it taking place inside the white house? >> it's taking place inside the administration and within the halls of congress. it has nnd hit the floor yet of the house and senate. but the moment the president decides and says "this is our strategy," then the congress will debate it. except you have a commander in chief that has already made the judgment. i thio[ you have to switch your strategy from counterinsurgency in afghanistan top counterterrorism in pakistan. >> rose: i hear you. >> and it's not a qstion of boots on the ground. >> rose: and you think general mcchrystal is simply wrong? >> no, i think he should be turned loose to do when general mcchrystal has been trained to do, and this is special operations and black operations. >> rose: which he did in iraq. >> in pakistan. >> rose: but he has a different mission now. i want to come back to this book "heart of a patriot: how i found the courage to survive vietnam." tell us what happened to you in vietnam. >> well... well, i, in my own

mind, had gone through rocket attacks and mortar attacks and things of the like in '67 and early?xz68 thinking basically that the war inevitably was going to be won by the united states, that the north vietnamese were on the ropes and as well as the. havec. but what they did was build up their sanctuaries in and in those sanctuaries moved out and attacked us in force called the tet offensive, which through us back on our heels. they marooned 5,000 marines at a place called caisson. i was with the first calvary division outside away and so we became the lead tloplt go in and rescue the marines. the marines with lieutenant jim jones moving down the road and me, captain max cleland, in the air with the first air calvary division moved into the kay son

in early april. when it was obvious our battalion was going to break the siege i was sent to a hill to set upç a relay site since i ws the communications officer. so i got off the radio relay team. what i do not know is that one of the young menç who had just shown up in country had loosened the pins on all his grenades on his web gear and he was a walking bomb. i don't think anybody else knew that. he got off on to the ground, dropped one of the grenades, it was live. i do not know it was live. as the chopper turned around and lifted off, i had my m-16 in my left hand, flak vest, i reached down with my right hand to get it. within five inches of the grenade it went off. i should be dead. but i was so close to the grenade that the flash burns seared my flesh. so i lay there on the ground smoking, but i wasn't bleeding

to death, actually, i was hurting massively, but my right arm was blown off, my right leg was blown off and myç left leg was blown off so badly that within an hour it was amputated. so then a flash much like the guys and gals thatet hurt in iraq and afghanistan with i.e.d.s now, i lostç a part ofy body that i had depended on all my life, my two legs and i right arm, because i was right-handed. so i was lucky to survive that. young men came to my aid and so forth. i spent a year and a half in military and v.a. hospitals to come back to an absolutely uncertain future. no job offers, no future. i said no girlfriend, no future, no car, no money, whatever. now's a great time to run for the state senate. so i did. politics was my outlet, became my outlet and my way of coping with things. when i lost in 2002, i went downhill big time, worse than ever my worst nightmare after

vietnam. >> rose: but don't go that fast. you go to walter reed hospital.ç you come out of that and you go into the state senate in georgia. how's your mental attitude then? >> i was a little s.o.b., as a matter of fact. t8you know, i thought i kind ofd knew everything. i met jimmy carter who tried to put forward a reorganization of state government, which i supported. that's how i became a carter supporter early on. and so i ran for lieutent governor in '74 and lost but i didn't lose everything. i didn't lose my car, i didn't lose my houses, i was living with my parents.... >> rose: living with the bod d body you had coming out of vietnam. >> right. and so by that time i had given up my limbs and i was in a wheelchair. so in 1976 when jimmy carter won he appointed me head of the v.a. then i was able to sink my teeth into all the issues that we're now talking about-- presidentd

is, vet center program which i yes... p.t.s.d., vet centerç program which is i created in 1980 and all the hidden wounds of war. >> rose: then you went to georgia and ran for senate. >> jimmy carter lost and i ran successfully for secretary of state, was secretary of state for 12ç years. then sam nunn decided to retire, so i said boy, oh, boy, this was my shot. i was elected narrowly and thought i would be the next sam nunn, the next dick russell of the united states senate. sought membership on the arms services committee because that's what i was interested in, taking care of the troops. >> rose: tradition of georgia senators. >> that's right. and for six years, you know, i gave it my best shot. >> rose: and that was a happy time for you? >> the initial part was a happy time. then came the whole clinton impeachment and all that monica lewinsky stuff. then the election of 2000 in which my fellow vietnam veteran al gore lost to bush and my life started going downhill from there. >> rose: so going downhill... n

terms of your success or going downhill in other u1v: >> in terms of bush and karl rove and all those guys coming after me. because i was up in 2002. >> rose: so the title says "how i found the courage toç survive vietnam, walter reed and karl rove." >> that's right. >> rose: what did karl rove do to you? >> basically karl rove flipped. he wasn't the only one, but he was the lead guy that flipped modern american politics from putting your best foot forward in terms of getting the voters to like you and support you to the emphasis of a campaign becoming driving the opposition's negatives up. even if they had served in the american military. now, the reason i think that rove and those guys went after mccain first in south carolina where me and four others in the senate who were vietnam veterans wrote a letter in his defense to my campaign in 2002 where my

hussein and osama bin laden to kerry being swift boated in 2004. that was part and parcel of driving the opposition's negatives up even if they serveç in the american military because on his side bush and his national guard service really was highly questionable and cheney never served at all. so he thought, i'm sure, that a good offense is the best defense. but basically he went across the line. >> rose: how did he go across the line? >> that kind of politics began to challenge legitimate service. >> rose: what did they say about you in that campaign? >> that in terms of the television ad, they indicated that somehow i was not able to defend this nation when i had given what i had given and the other guy had never served at all. now, that was crazy. >> rose: so they questioned your patriotism? >> yeah, absolutely. because they morphed me and my image along with osama bin ladeç

and saddam hussein. and that was crazy. i had nothing to do with those people. as a matter of fact, i had voted for... the congressionalç resolution to go after bin laden and i voted to invade iraqdue to the fact that cheney and others had said there were weapons of mass destruction maybe even nuclear weapons there. so i bought off on all that stuff and i regret and will regret to the end of my days the vote on the iraq war resolution. but they came after me because i was occupying a democratic seat in what they thought ought to be a republican seat. now, what they did was go across the line. they challenged and undercut and lied about military service. legitimate military service of mccain, me, and kerry. so that's where they crossed the line. you can say about me or kerry or mccain anythinyou want to say, but don'tç challenge our servi, don't take it away.

>> rose: and how did you take the defeat? >> i went down in my life worse than any time i ever went down in my life. i came toç a point where i didt want to live. i never tried to commit suicide, but i didn't want to live anymore. because basically the way that i coped with massive injuries coming back from my war was through politics, public service. blic service is me. i'm not a private sector guy, never will be. it just is not going to happen. i'm a public service guy. so when i lost, i had the powerful feeling that the people of georgiaad turned their back on me. that was my family in many ways. i'm an only child and now my mother's gone, i have my father. but the people of georgia were in effect my family. that's who i served. when they turned their back on me and voted for somebodyç els, when the nation was at risk in many ways, who had never served

in the military and the campaign of which lied about me and basically my ability to defend the countryç, that was too muc. so i lost everything that i had put together, to include a personal relationship with my fee i don't know say, and i went down big time. and for years cried about it, sobbed about it and found myself back in walter reed 40 years later in a p.t.s.d. clinic dealing with all of this. >> rose: and how did you come out of it? >> only by the grace of god and the help of good friends who patiently worked with me and counseled me for at least a period of three years or more. i went to weekly therapy at walter reed. i did meet with some afghan and iraq veterans although they inspired me more than me inspiring them.& and i looked down... i would look down the hall and i would say this is a flashback. this is 40 years earlier.

this is vietnam to me. and it was very difficult to go back to walter reed but i hadço and then i wound up in a 12-step group on tuesday night which is has been very meaningful to me then i got on some medication which i did want to get on and then i began to come around. >> rose: max cleland, the book "heart of a patriot, how i found the courage to survive vietnam, walter reed and karl rove." what are you doing with the battlefield monuments thing? >> in june 3, this year, president obama appointed me as secretary of the american battle monuments commission which runs the 24 cemetery ace broad. which commemorates the service and sacrifice of over 200,000 americans who've lost their lives primarily in world war i and world war ii. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: max cleland. thank you forç joining us, see you next time

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