roughly the population of biloxi, mississippi. the u.s. military in iraq had been scheduled to leave iraq by december 31, 2011. secretary gates now says he wants them to stay. and he is trying to figure outs how he can get the iraqi government to "ask" the u.s. to stay in iraq. >> the iraq and we are talking about some kind of residual american presence in terms of helping them with beyond december of 2011. >> some believe that we are sinking our roots in iraq and all the signs point that way. the u.s. embassy in iraq, get this, is the largest embassy in the world with a current population of 8,000 people. in the embassy. and the embassy suspects to build that 8,000, get this, up to 17,000 people. the u.s. embassy also has 19 planes and 24 helicopters. the a. u.s. dollars spent in iraq since day one is now more than $806 billion. question, what standard pentagon's justification for keeping u.s. troops in iraq? james? >> we have a tremendous amount of blood and treasure invested in iraq. i think they don't want to throw that away. they see

they may need that in berkeley, but not in biloxi. >> schieffer: i've heard a lot of people give a lot of different reasons that energy prices have gone up, but i believe must be the first to say that he did it on purpose. >> he said "under my cap-and- trade plan barack obama said that rates will skyrocket. not my words, but barack obama's words. "necessarily skyrocket." why would you try to push a cap- and-trade tax through to drive up the cost of electricity? because they believe it will mean we'll use less electricity. there will be less emissions. i don't back off from that one iota. it is hurting the economy. energy is 100% of the economy. energy is the life blood of the economy. they've tried to raise the price of oil. they've tried to raise taxes. they've tried to raise the price of coal, make it harder to get permits. i don't think there's any question that this is the policy of this administration. >> schieffer: all right. it's been a very busy week in politics. mitt romney made it official, he is running. sarah palin got a lot of attention. i'm not sure anybody about sarah pa

they may need that in berkeley, but we do not need that in biloxi, i can tell you that.laughter] [applause] >> but looks, obama's policy of driving up the cost of energy looks to me to be the only one that he has networks. [laughter] -- that works. [laughter] >> when he became president, gasoline was $1.84 a gallon. their policies have managed to more than doubled it. who pays it? men and women who pump gas into their cars and pickup trucks. where do we see it? we see it when our economy slows down because energy is 100% of the american economy. there is none of the american economy that does not have it tied to energy. so, republicans in the election are going to run on lower taxes, less spending, more american energy, and then we're going to run on one other thing -- getting rid of obama-care. [applause] >> again, again, the american people understand this. obama-care is costing jobs. how would any employer in his right mind decide to hire more people when he does not even know what his obligations and costs for health care are going to be for his employees? you see em