we've got richard haass, president of the cfr there. do you have a question for the master of the royal mint. >> i assume he wakes up every morning and one of the things he feels good about is that britain is not part of the eurozone. my question is, when he looks at his neighbors, what is his sense of whether they can work themselves out of the mess they got into. >> like us. >> first i'm grateful we've got the pound sterling, i'm master of the mint, where we make the pound coins. look, that gives you much greater freedom staying out of europe. the problem with the euro, they have a single currency. they can't transfer money through that currency. >> it's a two-tiered currency. you've basically got germany and everybody else. >> it's a bit like united states's dollar but no single government and no transfer across the union. that's the problem, got it sort out. also got to put their own houses in order, countries with poor productive economies like portugal, countries with real banking countries like ireland need to sort that out. i thi

joining us to discuss this tonight, richard haass, president of the council on foreign relations and expert on foreign affairs. you know, let us see exactly what gates said. it is kind of startling. russia pretending to be a democracy for a number of years. let's put up on the screen what they said. russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services. before you jump in, let's listen to what prime minister putin said and you can hear the whole interview tonight on "larry king live." this is kind of remarkable. >> translator: he's been deeply misled. our country is led by the people of the russian federation through the legitimately elected government and the parliament authorities of the president and the prime minister of the russian federation. >> all right, richard, who's right, secretary of defense gates, prime minister putin? what does this all mean? >> that's a pretty good line. oligarchy run by the security services. just because you have elections doesn't make you a democracy. the fact that mr. putin was president, is prime minis

you were asking richard haass, is there anybody, anybody in a policy making, in a real position of power who has a clear answer as to why we should be gunning ahead there. >> i actually -- richard asked us the question about afghanistan. he's been very critical of afghanistan and the troop surge there. why? i turned the question on him, mike. i said we sit around this table every day and we have top foreign policy advisors every day and we keep asking, what's the end game? why are we there? i asked richard the question. i said let me turn it back on you. i said have you heard one foreign policy expert explain why we're wasting $2 billion a week in afghanistan and getting 19-year-old kids shot in the back of the head to justify that? richard said no, there's no justification. it's karzai. >> they know it like so many other policies. they know completely this is vac ous. this is, again, push it forward, push it forward. this is the change. all we're doing is going down exactly the same rut on every one of these policies. no change at all. and they know that this one is failing, absolutely.