why did bob gates serve? b is to know his profound sense of duty, to country, to our security and most of all to our men and women who get up every day and put on america's uniform and put their lives on the line to keep us safe and to keep us free. when the outcome of the war in iraq was in doubt, bob gates presided over the extraordinary efforts it that helped restore order. over the past 2 1/2 years we've removed more than 100,000 troops from iraq, ended our combat mission, and are responsibly ending that war. when the fight against al qaeda and our efforts in afghanistan needed new focus, bob gates heed us twice the strategy that has finally put al qaeda on a path to defeat and ensures that after began stan never again becomes a source for attacks against our nation. when institutional inertia kept funding systems our troops didn't need, he challenged it it. speakinged hard truths and saving hundreds of billions of dollars that can be invested in the 21st century military. bob gates made it his mission to

>> i think bob gates and i have the same view about the use of our troops.osition that we should be a reluctant warrior and reluctant to put our troops in harm's way unless there's a compelling national security issue to do so. the fact that british and french were so far in front of going into libya to take on gadhafi that secretary gates and president of the united states felt that we had an obligation to these two countries in the forefront of supporting us in iraq and afghanistan but i think for the most part we've got to be very, very discrete in terms of our selection of future wars and putting our troops in harm's way. that's the message that bob gates is giving and one i support. >> what about iraq? if they want us to stay long e

their defense spending is less than two% of their gross domestic product, which bob gates said is an important criterion. and she was given the medal of freedom and a state dinner. what i think this reflects is a broader recognition that beyond merely military power, we have much more invested in our overall relationship with the europeans. >> warner: so you're saying this was what, he shouldn't have said it? >> not that he shouldn't have said it. but i think the way he said it, i think ignored the fact-- first of all, the europeans as you're seeing a debate in the united states, are very much focused on austerity and lack of economic growth, high unemployment. and it's hard-- i think we-- if we're going to pound the europeans to spend more, we should at least believe that they have that capability and the will to do more. and i doubt they do at this point. >> warner: is it a lack of will or is it a lack of money, general? >> i think they're related. i think your pines economically in several companies-- germany, for example, is doing as well or better than the united states is. righ

what struck me most about what bob gates said was emphasizing that 99% of the stress, stranz, sacrifices, are all on the troops. >> lehrer: or as an acstrakz to most americans. thank you both very much. >> brown: next, an acclaimed author takes on his toughest subject-- himself. ray suarez talks with writer oscar hijuelos. >> he is the author of "the mom bow kings play songs of love" for which he won the pulitzer prize, "and our house in the last world." this time the subject is himself. he just released a memoir called "thoughts without cigarettes." oscar hijuelos, welcome back to the "newshour". >> thank you, ray. it's a joy to be here. >> the subject might have been "portrait of the author as an untight young man." >> my first, i sort of told the story of my upbringing fictionally. the spine of that story was when i was a little kid i went to cube ai got very sick, i spent a year away interest my family, and the culture and sort of came back spending so much time in a hospital, i ended up losing easy facility with the language. >> suarez: spanish language. >> the spanish language, yea

bob gates, and i would be happy to have a long term security with the afghan government. t in korea. >> we are not. >> okay. >> secretary gates has been giving a lot of good speeches and far too much is accomplished at a good cost to let the momentum slip away. i think that he was not a fan of the surge in the beginning. i talked to him about it he believes we are making serious progress and i hope that the president will take the military advisors advice and we are winning the war and it would be terrible to fritter away. >> $5000 -- >> let me break n this ponds at the point where the president start to meet with the national security team, brit, to discuss what to do. famously back in september 2009, he said we will begin. he didn't say what the size will be. we'll begin the pull out and draw down in july 2011 just weeks away . >> it depends on whether it is a symbolic drawn down in the interest of keeping his promise in reasonably secure areas. my guess that gates will carry the day and we will not weaken in any meaningful way the commitment we made there and the force

bob gates did a few days ago. president karzai was the person who kind of first outed it officially. i think it is a big deal that white house officials i spoke to said that they're aware of somewhere between 10 and 20 different what they call leads into the taliban. they're sort of doing detective work is what they're saying, trying to work out if these leads, how legitimate are they. is somebody coming forward as sort of a free agent who really doesn't represent senior leadership of the taliban, or is it something deeper? they are saying they are not starry eyed about these discussions with the taliban. they don't expect some treaty of versailles or some peace agreement on the deck of the uss missouri. but they are looking at sort of some leads that appear to be fairly substantial. that might lead to further negotiation. so i think this is news worthy. >> fareed, it's interesting because you have an article in -- a piece in the "washington post" tomorrow that i read that's really fascinating and very scary about

so i think the message you're going to get from bob gates, probably from our military, is let's stay with the strategy, let's capitalize on the success we have made and see if we can make this a success in the 2014 time frame. >> certainly going to come up at this week, there are confirmation hearings for leon panetta as the new secretary of defense on thursday. and you know he's going to hear from the senate on that. >> yes, indeed. >> thank you very much, steve hadley, great to see you. >> nice to be here. >>> pro palestinian demonstrators on the syrian side of the border with israel confronted israeli soldiers again this weekend from the golan heights. jonathan prince served as deputy assistant secretary of state under president obama and was a top adviser to george mitchell. good to see you. >> great to see you. >> how do we read what is happening, how serious a threat to israel is this, to be drawn into the conflict and to be perhaps provoked into violence that israel has not sought on the golan heights? >> i think that as you see the forces, you know, move across the entire mid

last time around bob gates and petraeus and hillary clinton won.oe biden won. people want to get out faster. >> wolf, we're about two or three minutes away. >> the president of the united states is certainly going to reiterate what he said at that west point speech about the mission. he's going to go through specifics of what he said then and then said on many of those specifics there has been enormous progress. let me bring in gloria borger. candy crowley, first. candy, very quickly right now, he can't

training of afghan forces and also the afghan police but i perceive in time what the pentagon and what bob gates and general petraeus are all concerned about is that they want to drawdown but they don't want to drawdown that precipitous now if you listen to some of the points that president obama made last night my understanding was that he was just going to announce that he was going to withdraw around thirty thousand troops total by the end of next summer but i thought he was going to leave the rest of it pretty flexible and of course a few months after after the drawdown of the thirty thousand troops there will be the elections so then afterwards he has sort of a more political leader way but i was actually. pretty impressed that he did something that he didn't really have to do which is he determined the time when the entire drawdown of the of all or most u.s. troops and everything we've heard we've heard you for indeed we've heard different when we had candidate obama and then president obama and now if i go back to garrett and one of the things i find interesting as well is it going to get

and this one from "time" -- did bob gates service masters to well? and today from the "new york times" this have line stresses the importance of ties with pakistan. our numbers are on the screen. our first call is from detroit. jesse is on the phone. good morning. what impact did bob gates have on his job? good morning, jesse. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. i am a listener for years and years. i think the secretary of defense is a great experience leader, who has given the president quite a bit of help. and i think we have a great president. he has appointed people round in that -- for around him that have made it even better to watch. going after bin laden, you know, i think that was a very delicate operation, very important to our country. i appreciate the fact that we have a president that knows what is going on. i just do not see anything out there that can hamper this president. if i would like to see the republicans for one time, joined as president on things that are important to this country -- for one time join this president fi

troops there is for as long as possible and what would those bureaucratic that would be the pentagon bob gates at this moment at least and the commander in afghanistan general betray us and that has there been any sense of i mean we've seen reports saying that it is sort of breaking ranks with the generals here but how many folks on the hill pointed that out is that a concern it's going to come out tomorrow general petraeus will be being confirmed in the senate tomorrow and for the intelligence committee to take over the cia potentially and a lot of lawmakers mainly on saxby chambliss republican of georgia has already come out and said he wants to make sure that the president listen to on his commanders obviously the president took with the commander said with a grain of salt to quote his policy advisers said with a grain of salt so no one's going to be completely happy and it is the dawn of a new more independent obama when it comes to afterward i have to go back and challenge the idea that he didn't pay attention to what the trainer said in fact i think it's pretty clear from the leaks that

>> i think it's pretty unlikely, you know, that bob gates is sitting down with mullah omar directly across the table, you know, working out a peace agreement. not to say that that isn't a goal, to have some communication with taliban leaders and try and draw them back into the fold. it has long been said that afghanistan will be solved by a political settlement with the taliban and with the insurgents. you can't kill them all, you know, this is not going to happen, so there will be eventually, it is hoped, some type of political settlement. what is going on is certainly the u.s. is trying to identify key insurgent leaders that they potentially could work with, that they and nato could work with. more months now they have been reintegrating individual fighters back into their communities. they release them from detention eventually, send them back into their communities, and try and develop a little forward momentum that way. but one of the big problems right now is when you say the taliban, who are they? there's so many groups out there. there's so many different insurgent loyalties. just

bob gates has already done a good job identifying $400 billion in cuts. but we're going to do more. >> reporter: gates calls the 10% cut president obama's requesting disastrous. but the focus today will be on gates' role preventing disasters in america and beyond. but now that tough task of slicing the pentagon budget, well, that will go to his successor, leon panetta. live from capitol hill, i'm tracie potts for "today in the bay." marla? >> thank you, tracie. >>> in just a few hours, a man accused of stealing an expensive violin will make an appearance at a san francisco courthouse. scott sylvester is charged with second-degree burglary and receiving stolen property. you can see him here on a muni surveillance video. he stole it from the san francisco conservatory of music in april. police arrested the 27-year-old a few days later when he turned over the $20,000 antique violin to a priest at st. mary's cathedral. he has since pleaded not guilty. >>> sentencing will be handed down to a poll worker who stole election equipment last november. carl bradford

so it may be a candid bob gates but candid at a very awkward time. kyra? >> no doubt. rbara starr at the pentagon, barbara, thanks. >> i guess we could only imagine how gates speech went over with the nato council. we have a former commander to tell us what he thinks. so, general, you know, gates is being pretty direct here. he is basically saying, hey, nato, you are not pulling your weight. is that fair? >> it is fair. i think it has been going on ever since the fall of the berlin wall. i think what has to happen is nato is not a club. it is a military alliance. it has commitments. it has obligations. what you have to do is match those requirements or missions with resources. nato has not been doing that. libya is a good case. >> so let me ask you this. i'll just be blunt. is the mission here to sort of destabilize gadhafi and his forces or is the mission here to kill him, to take him out? >> i think you have to be very clear and clarity of mission is extremely important. i think secretary gates and others will agree, it is what is in u.n. resolution 1973, which is tak

leon panetta will be taking over for bob gates when he retires, and david petraeus will be taken over for leon panetta. so they will be weighing in on this question, but one more factor might be the general fatigue with war. we just saw the house on friday issue a nonbiden rebuke, essentially of the president's policy in libya. as you know, tragically five troops were just killed in iraq, so a lot of questions in just about an hour. >> you do have a sense that the republican parties having the same fatigue that the democrats had a couple years ago. >>> developing news out of the central iraq, where the military says five american troops were killed earlier today. iraqi officials say they were killed when rockets struck their living quarters in eastern baghdad. the single largest loss of life for the u.s. forces in iraq in two years. >>> syrian police are keeping demonstrators away from the border, trying to prevent a repeat of sunday's clashes. stephanie gosk has more. >> reporter: for a second time in less than a month, unarmed palestinians and supporters challenged the israeli milit

why did bob gates serve? our nation is at war. to know bob is to know his profound sense of duty. country and our security, and our men and women who get up every day and put on america's uniforms, and put theri lives on the line. when the outcome of the war in iraq was in doubt, he presided over the extraordinary efforts. over the last few years, we have removed 100,000 soldiers from iraq and ended the combat mission. we are responsibly ending the war. the fight against al qaeda -- when we needed to focus, he was helping us to devise this strategy that put al qaeda on the path of the feet and made -- made it so afghanistan was never in the source of attacks on the nation. bob gates launched a war on waste, challenging conventional wisdom with courage and conviction, speaking the hard truths and saving hundreds of billions of dollars that would be invested in the 21st century military. it was his mission to make certain that there were serving the troops in the field as well as us. and today we see the lifesaving difference that he has made. the shorter medevac times in afghanista

and bob gates has already done a lot to trim and will he will do more. and the pentagon feels like they have given all they can and so we have to look at entitlements. i've been willing to say we need to see where we can reduce the cost of health care spending and medicare and medicaid in the out years, not by shifting costs on to seniors, as some had proposed, but rather by actually reducing those costs. but even if we're doing it in the smart way, that's still tough politics, but it's still the right thing to do. so if everyone else is willing to take on their sacred cows and do tough things in order achieve the goal of real deficit reduction, then i think it would be hard for the republicans to stand there and say the tax break for corporate jets is sufficiently important that we're not willing to come to the table and get a deal done or we're so concerned aboutal protecting oil and gas subsidies for oil companies that are making money hand over fist. that's the reason we're not going to come to a deal? i don't think that's sustainable position. and t

chief of staff daley, and they were actually briefed by video conference by secretary of defense bob gates about the situation in afghanistan. as you mentioned, the president trying to determine exactly how many troops should be withdrawn, when that should begin, and, as you know, there's been a lot of debate about that. now, when asked when that would begin and what the troops withdrawal would look like, here is press secretary jay carney had to say just a short while ago. >> the president has yet to make a decision on the numbers. we had always said it would be real. there were skep tireptices who that the july 2011 date for a drawdown was not real. it will begin then. the president is going make his decision as he has said all along based on conditions on the ground. not whether or not there will be a drawdown or the beginning of a drawdown but the size and scope and pace of the drawdown. >> reporter: now, initially it had been thought that 3,000 to 5,000 troops should be withdrawn. we'll have to see if those figures still hold, but all of this comes amidst reports that there are calls

because we've all heard secretary bob gates talk about gradual withdrawal. >> well, not only secretary of state -- of defense gates on his last trip there to afghanistan this week, but also the top military commander there, general david petraeus has said just a couple weeks ago that the progress made so far there against the taliban in afghanistan is still fragile and reversible, and those words are the catch words for do not withdraw large numbers of forces. both we're told general petraeus and secretary gates publicly have said do not withdraw combat forces, save those until the very end. so any idea that that pace would be quickened beginning in july is not very likely actually, and it would be for only domestic political and economic considerations only, about you we heard secretary of state hillary clinton say today that the withdrawal would still be based on conditions on the ground, and the united states still has an agreement with nato nations not to entirely withdraw until the end of the 2014. so people will be looking at the pace and the scope of that withdrawal, but i still

so the americans, as you heard bob gates say last week, or this week, that, you know, nato has to pull its share. he was talking about libya and to some extent about afghanistan. but i think that they feel like they don't want -- one of the reasons they don't want to pull a lot of troops out quily is that they think that will start a flood from the europeans and the other countries at that time are involved in there and say well if you're leaving we're definitely leang right now. >> has the success on the ground led the taliban to be more interested in negotiating? and if there is negotiation, who is it between? >> i think that's one of those things i'm going to have to see to believe. there's a lot of talk about negotiating with the taliban but there's a lot of talk about negotiating with the taliban last year as well and they had some fake coming forward who didn't really represent the taliban, so there have been some mistakes along those lines. there's talk among u.s. officials that the taliban should be more interested cause of the scess on the ground and maybe they are and maybe t

president obama is the eighth president bob gates has called boss. quick to admit making more than his share of mistakes. as we cover the failings of political figures, we should point out the examples of unselfish public service and secretary gates is as good as any. his experience as cia director came in handy at the pentagon. today's enemies often don't organize in traditional armies or fly a national flag. about a year ago i asked him about the man arrested trying to detonate a bomb in times square. >> how many might there be? >> there's no way to know. >>> is that the -- >> the intelligence business, we used to divide everything we wanted to know into two categories. secrets and mysteries. secrets were the things that were ultimately knowable and mysteries were those you couldn't know. the number of those guys is unknowable. >> in that same conversation, the secretary fired back at liberals who believed secretary gates was the reason it was taking so long to reverse the ban on gays serving openly in the military. >> i've led several huge public

. >> there are two very csistent messages with what bob gates said last week with respect to na. first of all that the united states is not going to be able to continue to bear the burden of the vast majority of resources associated with nato whether in peace or in war. secondly the expeckation is that our nato allies could spend less and less and less and have an expectation to be able to do anything is pretty unrealistic and all the budgets that we've seen in europe are going down. he's been pretty consistent with respect to that. >> charlie: he found out in libya as he found out in afghanistan earlier in 2003, he found out that our fire power is much better than other people. >> we've invested a whole lot more. weave a debt and a capability which think the best capability in the world. that's not reason for others to not come along and continue to invest there as well. i was jus in germany, i met, i was just in london as well. met with my counterparts in both those countries. and there are investments i think those countries have to make in order to be able to perform across t

and general petraeus and bob gates and secretary clinton all argued for the larger number and they would have gone larger. that was seen as a victory for petraeus. >> larger number which was essential in their opinion for a counterinsurgency program allowing to move in troops, clear an area and hold that area. >> the taliban who had been giving protection to al qaeda and allowed them sanctuary and brought on 9/11 had the momentum in 2009 and president obama to his credit announced a surge. that surge has worked very well. i think the president deserves a lot of credit for that. it has reversed the momentum. the debate is everyone wants to wind this down but how rapidly to wind it down and there was not only divisions within the administration in which petraeus, gates and clinton were arguing let's do this slowly and let's have two more fighting seasons, this season and next year and joe biden widely reported was arguing for something faster. this is closer to the biden position which is the reason why -- what is this fighting season? you mentioned joe klein earlier tonight. he said the f