Together to push something through that would work unless you cooperated . Each department obviously has its own bureaucracy and they all kind of operate in their own area. And yet when you are dealing with a critical issue like afghanistan or isis or other things, its really important to Work Together. You have the diplomatic arm of the government working with the defense arm of the government to be able to Work Together to get things accomplished. Frankly a big part of that is personalities that are involved. I just have to tell you secretary clinton and i because of our history working together we were able to Work Together because i said to my staff work with their office to get this done. And so we would set up conferences together. We would go to conferences. We went to the u. N. Together to meet with the defense officials from the different arab countries to try and develop their security capabilities. She was at the table. I was at the table. We went to australia working with the australians to try to develop and improve that alliance with the australians. We did things together in europe. We did things together elsewhere and having that partnership was very important to our ability to deliver. It wasnt like we were competing against each other. Too often there is a lot of competition. Who gets the credit for at . Whos trying to get it done and so there is kind of a tendency not to really Work Together. But if there is a strong personal connection and by the way dont forget this, in washington you can pass laws. You can build new departments and it doesnt mean a thing unless you have good people running those departments and running those agencies. In the end that is what determines whether or not it works. We are about to get the hook so think of a political question of personal question. Political question, do you think there should be another president clinton . [laughter] i think that there should be somebody who runs for the presidency who has got great experience and great dedication this country and if that happens to be named clinton thats okay with me. If Hillary Clinton ran for president would you support her . Sure, absolutely. After her last campaign the headline was panettas lament, they had no plan. It says the money they brought in the Clinton Campaign should have done a much better job and how will it be different this time . Well you know its a huge challenge now. There are so much money in politics now that it scares the hill out of you in terms of this kind of open warfare that you see playing out on television between the various paths associated with it. I understand the game. You have got to raise money in order to compete against money and im sure clintons do it better than anybody in terms of being able to raise money and thats okay. But i really do think you have to broaden that effort so that ordinary citizens are conjured dating funds to a National Campaign rather than just relying on big packs to provide that money. Too much fundraising is done in new york, chicago, silicon valley, l. A. Where the big money is not enough of that fundraising is done among the American People themselves. Secretary why do you think she should be president . [laughter] you know she is somebody that i have seen who is dedicated to this country. She is smart and she is experienced and she is tough. What the hell else do you want . [laughter] [applause] on a light note you are a foodie. You were even a foodie before we called them foodies. You would have the best christmas parties. Where do you like t when you are in washington and . You know, there is no place in washington that compares to the food i get at home. [applause] and listen and make my own. For those of you who know what it is my mother used to make gnocchi and my he taught me how to make it and i get have to go to a restaurant who makes it as good as i do. Its time to sign some books i want to thank all of you that are watching in livestream land and thank you too political for Live Streaming us and thank you for being here in person. Thank you to politics and prose for pulling this together and thanks to sixth and i for this amazing setting and thank you secretary panetta. [applause] [inaudible conversations] book tv in prime time continues tomorrow night. Author of factory man, battled off shoring, state local. Later the destruction of the dollar threatens the global economy. Michael lewis, compon of the dollar threatens the global economy. Michael lewis, computers buy and sell stock based on complex algorithms. Algorithms. In prime time all week. Here is a look at some of the programs you will find christmas day. The lighting of the National Christmas tree followed by the White House Christmas decorations and the lighting of the christmas tree. Supreme Court Justice and former Florida Governor on the bill of rights and the founding fathers. Venture into the art of good writing. Joe searches the secret history of wonder woman. Their reading habits. American history tv, the fall of the berlin wall. Speeches from president john kennedy and ronald reagan. Fashion experts, and that 10 00 oclock more than 50 years of reporting on world events. For. For a complete schedule 223. Next, robert gates at the National Constitution center discusses memoir, duty. He talks about his management and shares stories about his relationship with the white house and congress. [applauding] i want to thank you for being here. We thank you for making that effort. Until i became secretary of defense i have never broken a bone or had a surgery. Fl on the ice and broke my shoulder in three places. Wade on a tractor. My security guards quickly came to the conclusion that al qaeda was no risk to me at all. I would like to say that it is good to be back and to apologize to the audience on my right. The results of a broken neck is somewhat limited mobility well, that being said, lets get to your book, memoirs of a secretary of war. A striking account, not the least because it gave what i would call an almost realtime account. As you and other very tough words of the nations security establishment wrestled with the difficulties on the ground. I would i would like to talk to you about your impressions of pres. Obama. Before we get into that i wanted to focus on the part of the book that has not gotten that much attention but is equally important, your description of the situation of the government and white house. You describe a dire situation. American troops are dying. Insurgents are gathering force. There is extreme explosive sectarian violence and no apparent plan on the part of the United States government for coping with that. But the take away is that we had not planned properly for the occupation and that it never occurred to military planners that we might be there as long as we had. Why were we so mistaken . One of the concluding sections of the book is in effect on lessons learned. One of the things you would think people would understand would be how frequently people who advocate going to war and people who make decisions to go to war almost always are convinced that the war will be short. We will celebrate the centenary of world war i. The problem, and it really is true of both. What began as swift military victories quickly degenerated into long and grinding wars. In the case of the rack it was believed it would be a shortterm commitment. It would be interesting to ask those who were participants in the decisionmaking, had they known in march 2003 that the country would be at work for six or seven more years whether they would have made the decision they did. But this assumption that the war would be short or that the end was right around the corner afflicted the department of defense as badly as it did the decisionmakers themselves. And because everyone assumed that the war would be over quickly, there was a great reluctance to spend significant sums of money on equipment that might be needed to protect the troops but that might be useful. As i described in the book, the department of defense is organized to plan for war, not wage war. The services dedicate all of their efforts to developing their longrange procurement plans and then defending those plans in the budget process regardless of what comes along. And so people were reluctant to, for example, fund, Development Fund for mine resistant ambush protection vehicles the same so many lives and limbs. That particular kind of vehicle was not in any plan for the army on marine corps. I will ask about that in just a moment. One of the key themes is that the military planners inside the beltway, civilian leaders simply did not adjust or respond to. They did not adjust to changing situations on the ground. The fact that i also write that after the initial invasion it was a series of stunningly bad decisions. I will let you read a portion, a situation that came across. You heaps quite a bit of praise on president bush. I think your critique of the president and the much reported critiques of president obama have missed the. And are part of a larger fabric and valuation of both of these men. Let me let me read this one portion which describes what i think is a scandalous situation. Fundamentally flawed and persistent assumption from the outset that the war would be short causing problems on the ground and for the troops as months stretched in two years they. To their original assumption and seemed unwilling to invest substantial dollars. To bring them home safely and if wounded to provide them with the very best care. Care. He wanted to spend precious dollars on equipment for todays troops. So for years troops traveled but even with our morning they were vulnerable. Were people were people asleep at the switch . Why did they not respond . What we were doing was not working. Were they getting that information . I think as i indicated earlier, they kept thinking the end was right around the corner. The commander in the field, our commander was still planning to draw down from 15 to ten. And only realized toward the end that it would not be possible. The first person i think seriously to conclude that the strategy was not working with president bush, and i think that happened in the late spring or summer of 2,006. There were several different reviews watched, including the most important one led by the National SecurityCouncil Staff which then led to the president s decision to search troops to get control of the security situation, particularly in baghdad. This is a case that has been presented mostly in a negative light, but i dont think its a negative consideration. Both bush and bush and obama pushed back against the generals. It was the civilian leaders that decided the strategy was not working, and when bush decided to support the surge, he was opposed by the entire joint chiefs of staff, the chairman, the theater commander and the commander of Central Command in florida. I must ask you, you can hardly characterize that as a brilliant insight. The entire country turned against the war. Why were they so late when everyone else decided it was not going well . I wish i had an exclamation. I was not their. I think that they had concluded that there view was that more troops would aggravate the situation rather than help it. It would let the iraqis off the hook in terms of assuming responsibility for their own security and that it would and that they were expecting to see a reducing us presence. One other question on the subject. You write in the book about general should seki before the invasion, that an occupation would require hundreds of thousands of troops. Was he right . I think that the initial this goes back to the mistakes that i think were made after the original invasion. Had the army not been disbanded, which was one of those catastrophic mistakes, turning 400,000 men thousand men who did not know anything except how to shoot into the civilian economy with no support for their families was a formula for disaster. If those troops, if we had done our best to keep the iraqi army coherent but with different leaders than that you probably would not have seen the looting that took place and might have had greater civil order. So the number of troops required after the invasion in part dependent upon making smart decisions about what we would do next. I said in a speech in may of 2,0036 weeks after the invasion that now that we had overthrown saddam it reminded me of a situation where the dog catches the car. Now what do you do . I said at the time, if we have more than 100,000 troops for more than a few months we we will be in serious trouble. I said i thought that the Political Part would be far more difficult than the original invasion. So i think if different decisions have been made then you might have had a different outcome. We we ended up with what we did, and people seemed unwilling to stick there neck out to say that it was a stupid decision. It is like nobody ever read a book about the fact that if you ran the local power plan you still had to be a member of the party. That party. That did not mean you were him was best friend. You had to be a member of the baath party. Just just being oblivious went to some amazingly stupid decisions. It was not just a matter of military infrastructure being dissolved but the civilian bureaucracy as well which just disappeared overnight. It goes to the equipment question you asked me. The secretary famously said to a soldier, you go to war with the army you have that is true. I like a lot of people in the congress. Initially all except that argument that Centcom Hussein said on tuesday and had weapons of mass destruction. So in that speech that i referred to that i supported the original decision for that reason. But i say in the book toward the end of rodriquez is going to baghdad in the First World War because that would mean occupy twothirds of iraq. So we were unanimous to oppose the idea of going to baghdad and we took a lot of grief for that for not completing the job. We did it got to get that criticism after march 2003 any more. Than i argued maybe i would have made this same argument about going to baghdad gore would have been far more skeptical because of intelligence background of the intelligence case they had weapons of mass destruction destruction. Have a pretty good view of the capabilities. So to be honest is hard for me to say with 10 years of hindsight. Host talk about your effort to get these hardened vehicles for the troops in iraq. You were surprised to learn that there were these vehicles in development with the mraps that went along way to reduce casualties. How did you get that done . I know that senator biden was the target of much of your criticism. Fifth half. Guest it is what i tried to hammer home the to go into a defensive crouch it was a newspaper series in the Washington Post are those that led me to fire the secretary of the army. I first read about the mraps in usa today. That the green had 300 of these but not one single marine had been killed at of 1,000 attacks. I got some briefings and i wanted to buy these in large numbers. Either civilian or in uniform billing is supported that decision and i basically said were going to do it. This is one place a very critical of the congress in this book but congress did the right thing in a timely way and gave me all the money i ask for we bought 27,000 of these vehicles. One of the measures that meant the most to meet but when i first became secretary to visit the armys burn unit in san antonio it was pulled because most of them were in the humvees that had blown up but within six months of leadingedge secretary the per unit was nearly empty. So ultimately everybody came around this was a good idea because i said so as secretary of defense but there was a lot of opposition and because these were not in any bettys longterm procurement plans. And worried about what they would do with after the war but my attitude is we were in a war you were all in. Whatever it takes to do the job to come home safely. If you have this surplus so be it. The one message that was not be available to save lives that with the bureaucratic agenda how do you fix a problem like that . It seems cultural is that survived after you left. Is a leadership issue. One that is even more shocking in my view is the time for medevac in iraq was one hour call the golden our. But if the helicopter could be dispatched for the kidnapping get to the hospital in one hour in afghanistan was two hours and i said one hour just like iraq. But senior officials came to me with statistics how the death rates were comparable despite the time difference in there for because it was statistically a washer was not worth the investment to put additional resources. My reaction was simple. If i am a soldier and i have been blown up i want a helicopter there as quickly as possible. So we send more helicopters and i made that decision in january of 2008 for nine. And then there is taking place in less than 40 minutes. But receives those that were in charge were not looking from the soldiers standpoint. The other problem so many elements of the department of defense to have to be on board with the many people or the of budget people to slow down or stop something from happening only the secretary of defense has the authority to override everybody in the book. Host that is a commitment to get this done. There is nothing like getting the attention of the senior military and the pentagon as a whole. So in the case of both walter reed in the nuclear issue. I did not fire them for not knowing about it in the first place but because once they knew about it they did not taken seriously. That is accountability the needs to be exercised more frequently. Host how about general mcchrystal . Have first i felt he committed a terrible error. But general mcchrystal was one of the most effective combat generals as commander of the joint special operations units in iraq and afghanistan and did a lot of damage to people who were killing our troops but the role politics and media was a new battle space for general mcchrystal as a brand new Second Lieutenant in that realm. And as effective as he was in the command position he stepped out of line with some of his interviews. The ndp equitations can melt to disparage the Vice President in the National Security advisor in and others coming my worry was