plus their recent trip to afghanistan. rapid increasing gas prices. how high and how long? with former ceo of shell oil. i'm candy crowley. and this in is "state of the union." the afghan government says the man who killed two american soldiers inside a highly secured afghan government building is an afghan intelligence officer. president hamid karzai has offered condolences to the families of the four americans killed since news that u.s. personnel apparently inadvertently burned copies of the koran at an air base in afghanistan. karzai called for calm but insisted the u.s. must prosecute those responsible for burning the muslim holy book. joining from me kabul, ryan crocker. mr. ambassador, let me ask you, first, the u.s. over more than ten years has spent half a trillion dollars in afghanistan, almost 2,000 american lives have been lost, and the american people wake up this morning to find that two high military officers sitting inside a secured afghan government building were murdered basically by someone who was, you know, freely walked into na building and the burning of the u.s. flags, two soldiers killed in trying to combat protests. why in the world shouldn't americans be waking up saying we've got to get out of there? >> well, candy, a terrible event, strongly condemned by secretary panetta and others. general allen and i are just back from the ramp ceremony for the two fallen heros in which we saw them off on their last journey home, so we all feel it out here. that said, and as president obama said yesterday, we remain committed to a partnership with the afghan government and people as we seek to achieve our shared goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al qaeda and strengthening the afghan state and we're doing that so that afghanistan can never again be the refuge for terrorists who would strike the american homeland. >> i understand that but the question is, why do we still have this relationship with a government that is either too weak or unwilling to do some of the things we need it to do so u.s. troops can come out? i think it took five days for president karzai to get out there and say to the folks on street, calm down here. he's demanding the prosecution of military officials. it just doesn't seem like the best atmospheric for putting together some of the agreements you're going to need from the karzai government. >> thigh we need to bear in mind that the afghan security forces, throughout this whole process, have been seeking to quell these demonstrations. they've done so with loss of life on their side as well as some of the protesters, and they have been defending u.s. installations. so they are very much in this fight trying to protect us. and i'd also point out that president karzai's statement today was by no means his first. president obama, in his statement yesterday after he spoke to general allen, praised president karzai for his calls for calm which he's been doing almost since the beginning. look, candy, this is hard. i opened this ambassador here more than a decade ago and there was nothing, no institutions new york ministries new york police, no army, no nothing. coming back after almost a decade, while the challenges are huge, the achievements are pretty considerable, too, and the stakes again, as i said, remain high. if we decide we're tired of it al qaeda and the taliban certainly aren't. >> one of the thinged that we're told from our reporters in afghanistan is that today's sunday, that there were attacks in the north, seven more u.s. personnel injured how does this end? this is the sixth day of the violent protests. >> candy, i've soon this kind of thing before when i was ambassador to pakistan. religious sensitivities run very, very deep in this part of the world and several times while i was there we saw countrywide violence. at a certain point it tapers off and i think we're all hopeful that the appeal for calm that president karzai made today and he did so with the backing of the entire political leadership of the country will create a condition in which this diminishes. there were some tough attacks up in the north. the rest of the country, though, was pretty calm today. >> and yet, mr. ambassador, nato and the u.s. have pulled all their personnel out of the afghan ministries. so basically you have a situation here where the u.s. is working with a government but we don't trust the security inside the ministries of that very same government. we won't put u.s. personnel in there because we don't think it's safe. how do you reach agreements under that kind of tone? >> again, you just keep pushing ahead. the very prudent step that general allen took yesterday mirrors my own. i pulled embedded civilians out of the ministries. tensions are running very high here and i think we need to let things calm down, return to a more normal atmosphere, and then get on with business. and doesn't mean that we're not doinged by now, we are. with both military counterparts and civilian counterparts. again, these are terrible tragedies. and very worthy of the condemnation they received. but this is not the time to decide that we're done here. we have got to redouble our efforts. we've got to create a situation in which al qaeda is not coming back. >> we have heard over and over again that from various u.s. officials that this was inadvertent, they did not know, in fact, that they were burning the koran when they emptied out a detainee library essentially. what i'm wondering is, privately, does president karzai accept this was inadvertent? >> candy, both privately and publicly president karzai said he recognizes this was an inadvertent mistake. >> yet calling for the prosecution. >> that was very early statements. we have said on our side that there's an investigation under way and people will be held to account. >> finally, could i ask you a slightly different note, do you think that the continuing presence of enemy sanctuaries, particularly for economy in pakistan is undermining -- >> i i there's no question the safe haven have been and remain a problem. it's difficult for the afghans and ourselves and our nato allied to decisively defeat an enemy who can take sanctuary and maintain its headquarters in another country. we've been clear about that. we've been public about that. pakistani government needs to take action for their own sake as well as afghanistan's and ours. >> u.s. ambassador to afghanistan, ryan crocker, thank you so much more your time this morning. after the break, president obama seems confident about his re-election chance but was will rising gas prices get in the way. obama campaign senior adviser robert gibbs joinsus. >> late, secretary of state hillary clinton emerges in a new interview as the president's biggest advocate. we'll have that later in the hour.it us [ ding ] oh, that's helpful! well, our company does that, too. actually, we invented that. it's like a sauna in here. helping you save, even if it's not with us -- now, that's progressive! call or click today. no mas pantalones! whose non-stop day starts with back pain... and a choice. take advil now and maybe up to four in a day. or choose aleve and two pills for a day free of pain. way to go, coach. ♪ sure. what flavor? 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[ cheering ] [ tom ] i wanna see that again. ♪ joining me now is robert gibbs, former white house press secretary and a senior campaign adviser for president obama. re-election campaign adviser, i guess i should say. i want to continue a little bit in this talk about afghanistan, what's going on there, and play for you something that newt gingrich said on friday. >> candidly, if hamid karzai, president of afghanistan, doesn't feel like apologizing then i think we should say good-bye and good luck. we don't need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn't care. >> now i imagine that in a lot of ways gingrich is voice what a lot of people are thinking at this point, the koran was burned, we think inadvertently by u.s. personnel and in response four u.s. military personnel are dead, including two sitting in an office in an afghan interior ministry. doesn't that capture the public mood like, what are we doing there, let's just get out? >> i think it's important to understand why we went and that is to as ambassador crocker said, make sure al qaeda doesn't have a safe halven. we were told al qaeda's gone. >> can dirk letdy let's be clea. they don't have a safe halve tonight plan a terrorist attack like on 9/11 that killed 3,000 americans. we disrupted a large amount of al qaeda's network, as you know bin laden is dead and what the president's trying to do now is get us to a point where we can hand off the security of afghanistan to the afghans and that we can bring our troops home. i think what he's trying to do is diffuse the tension that's there and you know, quite honestly, i'm not sure many people are looking to newt gingrich for foreign policy advice. if there's a problem on the lunar colony, he'll be among the first we call. >> back at him. let me move you to some domestic issues. right now gas prices. and the president has said, and a lot of economic advisers and gas expert as degree, there's very little that a president can do to immediately effect what's go on at pumps. it doesn't mean it doesn't get ow on the campaign trail, i want viewers to take a listen to this. >> under our administration we will drill for oil in alaska. >> anybody who tells you that we can drill our way out of this problem doesn't know what they're talking about. >> i think the easiest decision this president has faced was whether or not to build the keystone pipeline, and he flunked that easy question, it's unbelievable. >> there is no silver bullet. there never hassen. so it's clearly on the political agenda. a lot of the economists i talked to said $4 is the magic number, one the national average gets to $4 a gallon, it's already there in some places it begins to affect the economy. people have less money that their pockets and businesses, overhead goes up so they don't want to hire. >> sure. >> we're look agent fragile recovery that might get hit soon. does the president have anything left in his quiver that he can use to bring some of this down? >> well, look, as you mentioned, candy, oil is a global commodity it's at the whims i aworld using more and more oil and because of the demand pushing that price up. what the president talked about this week is we have to employ an all of the above strategy. we cannot have 2% of the world's oil, use 25% on a daily basis and think that the only thing we can do is drill. that's not going to solve our problem. but you had rick santorum mention drilling in the arctic, about a week or so ago the president approved more permits to explore drilling in the arctic. we just signed an agreement with mexico to develop areas in the gulf of mexico that span the two countries' border. we're doing all that we can because we're using less foreign oil than we have in the past 16 years and drilling more and producing more than we have in the past eight years. >> some of the republicans argued that all of the things were set long before the president came to office. >> don't they always say that, candy? those are the same people, i'm sure when gas hit a record high 2008 were blaming george bush. don't look hard for that video because it's not there because there are a series of people that want tell you there are easy magic bullet solutions to the problems that we face. we know that's not truz. >> the president last year did let loose some of the strategic oil reserves. >> candy, i'm no longer in those mote meetings. i know the white house will look at every available option in the short term and long term. we're not going to magically make this problem disappear. we have to increase domestic oil production, increase exploration for natural gas. this is the president the first in 30 years to approve a new nuclear reactor. we have once in a lifetime fuel efficiency standards. all of these things are what we need to make progress on a problem that's been with us for decades. >> on the campaign trail, and this is a brief sound bite, i want to play something that president obama said this week. >> my presidency's not over. i've got another five years coming up. we're going to get this done. >> so, you guys sitting back at the re-election thing, it's done. >> i'm glad the president thinks we're going to went. i'd be worried if he didn't. but obviously, look, this is going to be a close election candy. there's a lot of people working very hard to make sure that the president gets back. >> listen, we asked -- quinnipiac had a poll out asking, do you think president obama deserves to be re-elected, which may be why this five more years may be premature. right now 45%, only 45% of people say yes, he deserves to be re-elected, 50% say no. it hasn't changed since november, why is that? >> they're going to be -- there's 100 different polls that will tell you 101 different things. i think every poll i've seen in the last three months shows you the terrific damage that the republican primary is doing to the republican candidates. >> numbers have gone down. >> people like mitt romney are watching their approval ratings and their favorable ratings with independent voters, their unfavorable ratings skyrocket. in his home state of michigan a poll showed him trailing the president in what should be a battleground state by 16 points. it's because they're rushing to the right to try to convince conservatives that they're conservative. >> democrats and the dnc have been taking a little time looking at rick santorum. size him up for me as a possible rival to president obama. >> look, i think, you know, i don't think tuesday's going to be a clarifying event in the republican primary. i think because of the way delegates are apportioned, this is going to go on for weeks and weeks and i think he's got a legitimate chance to be the republican nominee. he's clearly somebody who has a very different economic background than mitt romney. he's somebody that is, you know -- >> blue collar. >> blue collar, he's from pennsylvania. not worth $250 million and i assume his wife doesn't have several cadillacs. i think he clearly brings a little bit different challenge but i will say this, if you look at their economic plans and look at the economic plan that mitt romney put out this week, in many ways they are very much similar in the sense that they have tax cut plans that would add trillions and trillions to our debts and deficits. not one of the candidate is serious about controlling the deaf set. >> robert gibbs, thank you for joining us. after the break, president obama seems confident about his re-election chance but was do rising gas prices get in the way? certainly we'll be continuing to talk about that with our next up and that in fact is senator john mccain and senator lindsey graham t yosa it was greek. mmhmm. so is it greek or is it yoplait? exactly. okay... 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