Gates: Afghan move 'matter of weeks'

by Mark Silva

With the Obama administration confronting a decision over escalating U.S. military forces in Afghanistan -- something which the general in command there views as essential to averting failure -- the Defense secretary says some time is necessary to reassess the strategy there before deploying any additional troops.

General Stanly McChrystal has assesed the situation, neary eight years into the U.S. war there. "He has found the situation on the ground in Afghanistan worse than he had... anticipated,'' Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an an appearance on ABC News' This Week With George Stephanopoulos aired this morning.

"And so I think what the president is now saying is in light of the (flawed Afghan) election, in light of McChrystal's more concerning assessment of the situation on the ground, have we got the strategy right, were the decisions in -- that he made at the end of March, the right ones?'' Gates said. "Do we need to some adjustments in light of what we've found? And once we've decided whether or not to make adjustments in the strategy, then we will consider the additional resources...

"It's a matter of a few weeks,'' Gates said of the time needed to sort it all out, denying a suggesting that the military command is divided over the issue. "People should remember that the debate within the Bush administration on the surge (in Iraq) lasted three months, from October to December, 2006.'' Even if they decided to deploy more forces to Afghanistan today, Gates said, they would not arrive in January.

Gates also addressed the disclosure of a once-secret uranium enrichment plant in Iran, as well as Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's demand for an apology from the West for accusing Iran of deception in its development: "Not a chance.''

As multilateral talks with Tehran get underway this week, Gates also addressed that military option which the U.S. will not remove from the table, in a talk with CNN's John King on State of the Union aired this morning.

"We obviously don't take any options off the table,'' Gates told King. " My view has been that there has been an opportunity through the use of diplomacy and economic sanctions to persuade the Iranians to change their approach to -- to nuclear weapons.

"The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time. The estimates are one to three years or so. And the only way you end up not having a nuclear-capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons, as opposed to strengthened.''

Gates also said this about meeting the president's deadline of closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the Jan. 22 deadline:

"It's going to be tough.''

Here, courtesy of ABC, and CNN are transcripts of the interviews:

ABC News This Week:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And we begin with the secretary of

Defense, Robert Gates.

Welcome back to "This Week".

National security was front and center all week long. Let's begin with

Afghanistan. We saw the leak of General McChrystal's review. And he

concluded that the United States has about 12 months to reverse Taliban

momentum and that without new troops, the strategy laid out by the

president is likely to fail.

And I want to show what the president said back in March when he laid

out that strategy. He called it "new and comprehensive."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This marks the

conclusion of a careful policy review. My administration has heard from

our military commanders, as well as our diplomats. We've consulted with

the Afghan and Pakistani governments with our partners and our NATO

allies and with other donors and international organizations. We've

also worked closely with members of Congress here at home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now, this was clearly a carefully considered strategy.

And now the president is telling us -- he told me last week that he

can't approve General McChrystal's request until we get the strategy right.

Why the second thoughts on the strategy?

ROBERT GATES, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I don't think there are second

thoughts so much as when he made his decisions at the end of March, he

also announced that he would -- we would be reviewing the policy and the

strategy after the elections...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But he said (INAUDIBLE) was in the tactics, not the

strategy.

GATES: Well, I -- I think that he -- he clearly felt that we would

have to reassess where we are after the election. Now, in addition to

having a flawed election in Afghanistan, we now have General

McChrystal's assessment. When the president made his comments at -- at

the end of March, his decisions, obviously, General McChrystal was not

in place. We now have his assessment. He has found the situation on

the ground in Afghanistan worse than he had -- then he anticipated.

And so I think what the president is now saying is in light of the

election, in light of McChrystal's more concerning assessment of the

situation on the ground, have we got the strategy right, were the

decisions in -- that he made at the end of March, the right ones?

Do we need to some adjustments in light of what we've found?

And once we've decided whether or not to make adjustments in the

strategy, then we will consider the additional resources.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But did -- but didn't General McChrystal take these

problems of the election into account?

He didn't even deliver his report until August 30th, which was after

the elections. Dennis Blair, the head of National Intelligence, said

back in February or March that we could foresee that there would be

problems with this election.

GATES: Well, I think -- I think that the potential magnitude of the

problems in the election really didn't become apparent until the vote

count began in early September. So -- so I think it was really after he

submitted his -- his assessment.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So now we have a real dilemma.

Does that mean that the United States is really thinking whether it can

even -- whether it can bolster President Karzai's government or whether

we have to give up on it?

GATES: Well, I -- you know, the Afghan people have gone to the polls

and we have the two election commissions, one internal and one

international, that could still come to conclusions, even if they throw

out some fraudulent ballots or a number of fraudulent ballots, that

there was a clear winner.

The key is whether the Afghans believe that their government has

legitimacy. And everything that I've seen in the intelligence and

elsewhere indicates that remains the case.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It does seem like you're caught in a dilemma right

now. You've got your commanding general on the ground who's given you

this report. He's said the troops -- more troops are necessary or

you risk failure. That report has been endorsed by the head of Central

Command, David Petraeus. Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff, went to Congress and said we probably need more troops.

Yet the president is saying that we need to think about the strategy

right now. And it really creates the impression of a rift between the

civilian leadership, you, as secretary of Defense, the president and the

uniformed military.

GATES: I don't think that's the case at all. I talked with -- I had

an extensive conversation on the telephone with both General McChrystal

and General Petraeus on -- on Wednesday. General McChrystal was very

explicit in saying that he thinks this assessment, this review that's

going on right now is exactly the right thing to do. He obviously

doesn't want it to be open-ended or be a protracted kind of thing...

STEPHANOPOULOS: How long will it take?

GATES: Well, I -- you know, I -- it's not going to take -- I think it

-- it's a matter of a few weeks. And people should remember that the

debate within the Bush administration on the surge lasted three months,

from October to December, 2006.

So I think it's important to make sure we're confident that we have the

right strategy in place and then we can make the decisions on additional

forces.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the clock really does seem to be ticking again, to

go back to General McChrystal's report. He says that if we don't turn

the tide in the next 12 months, we risk failure. So every week that

goes by puts the soldiers who are on the ground at risk, doesn't it?

GATES: But having the -- having the wrong strategy would put even more

soldiers at risk. So I think it's important to get the strategy right

and then we can make the resources decision. Because, as I say, I don't

expect this to be protracted process. The reality is that even if the

president did decide to approve additional combat forces going into

Afghanistan, the first forces couldn't arrive until January.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what are the options right now?

You have said in the past that you didn't believe what some people are

recommending -- stepping up drone attacks, stepping up missile attacks,

using Special Forces.

You don't believe -- or haven't believed in the past that that's

sufficient to contain the Taliban.

GATES: I think that most people who -- the people that I've talked to

in the Pentagon who are the experts on counter-terrorism essentially say

that counter-terrorism is only possible if you have the kind of

intelligence that allows you to target the terrorists. And the only way

you get that intelligence is by being on the ground -- getting

information from people like the Afghans or, in the case of Iraq, the

Iraqis.

And so you can't do this from -- from a distance or remotely, in the

view of virtually all of the experts that I've talked to.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So if that -- if that's not going to work, then -- and

then you have General McChrystal, who said in his report that you need a

full blown counter-insurgency campaign, counter-insurgency is the

answer. That certainly seems to be endorsed by General Petraeus.

Is there a middle ground between those two poles?

GATES: Well, I think -- I think people are -- are, frankly, so focused

on -- on the comment that -- in General McChrystal's report about

additional resources that they're neglecting to look at the rest of

what's in his report. And that -- and where he talks very explicitly

about the fact that -- that a preoccupation with the resources or with

additional forces, if you don't have the strategy right, is a mistake.

And -- and he, as I say, he understands this process that's underway.

But -- but what he talks about in most of that assessment is not

resources, but a different way of using U.S. forces and coalition forces

in Afghanistan. It talks about accelerating the growth of the Afghan

national security forces. It spends a lot of time talking about how we

stay on side with the Afghan people.

This is mostly what McChrystal's assessment is about.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it's a resource-intensive strategy, isn't it?

He says that the troops have to probably be more lightly armed and

engage more with the population. And it's hard to ignore that stark

conclusion. Success is not ensured by additional forces alone, as you

point out, but continued under resourcing will likely cause failure --

failure.

GATES: Well, that's what we're discussing and how do we avoid that?

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, as you said, you hope to have this done in a few

weeks and you want to avoid failure, as well. But the president has not

made any -- any decision at all on resources?

Has he -- has he ruled it out?

GATES: No, I haven't even given him General McChrystal's request for

resources. I have the -- I -- I'm receiving the -- the report. I'm

going to sit on it until I think -- or the president thinks -- it's

appropriate to bring that into the discussion of the national security

principles.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's what -- General McChrystal says we have to have

more troops to avoid failure. Where we've had a lack of clarity on what

success means in Afghanistan, you pointed out at the beginning of this

year what it was. And he said we're not going to issue (INAUDIBLE) in

Afghanistan.

The president's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, was asked for his

definition of success last month and here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMB. RICHARD HOLBROOKE, SPECIAL ENVOY, PAKISTAN & AFGHANISTAN: I would

say this about defining success in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the

simplest sense, the Supreme Court test for another issue, we'll know it

when we see it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is that good enough?

GATES: Well, I think -- I think we know it when we see it and we see

it in Iraq. I think that success in Afghanistan looks a great deal like

success in Iraq, in this respect, that the Afghan national security

forces increasingly take the lead in protecting their own territory and

going after the insurgents and protecting their own people.

We withdraw to an over watch situation and then we withdraw altogether.

STEPHANOPOULOS: This first required a surge in Iraq.

GATES: It did require a surge. And that's the issue that we will be

looking at over the next several weeks -- the next couple of weeks or

so, is do we have the right strategy?

And that includes the question of -- of is the -- is McChrystal's

approach, in the view of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central

Command commander, the right approach?

And if so, then what -- what would be the initial resources involved?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me turn to Iran. The president has put Iran on

notice that they're going to have to allow inspectors into this secret

site which U.S. intelligence discovered for enriching uranium.

President Ahmadinejad says that President Obama is mistaken and the

United States owes Iran an apology.

Is Iran going to get one?

GATES: Not a chance.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what happens next?

The president has said that this site is not configured for peaceful

purposes. Now, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded -- of

the U.S. government -- concluded that Iran had stopped its active

nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Does the president's conclusion, that this site is not configured for

peaceful purposes, mean that that intelligence estimate is no longer

operative?

GATES: No, not necessarily. But what it does mean is that they had a

covert site. They did not declare it. They didn't -- if -- if this

were a peaceful nuclear program, why didn't they announce this site when

they began to construct it?

Why didn't they allow IAEA inspectors in from the very beginning?

This -- this is part of a pattern of deception and lies on the part of

the Iranians from the very beginning with respect to their nuclear

program. So it's no wonder that world leaders think that they have

ulterior motives, that they have a plan to go forward with nuclear weapons.

Otherwise, why would they do all this in such a deceptive manner?

STEPHANOPOULOS: U.S. intelligence had been tracking this site for

quite some time before President Obama made it public.

Is this the only secret site that we know of?

GATES: Well, I'm not going to -- I'm not going to get into that. I

would just say that we're watching very closely.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Does the United States government believe that Iran

has an active nuclear weapons program?

GATES: I think that -- my personal opinion is that the Iranians have

the intention of having nuclear weapons. I think the question of

whether they have made a formal decision to -- to move toward the

development of nuclear weapons is -- is in doubt.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy

Agency said a couple of weeks ago that Iran is closer to what he called

break out capacity on developing a nuclear weapon.

What does that mean exactly?

And how much time -- if they do, indeed, have the intent, how much time

do we have before Iran has a nuclear weapons capacity?

GATES: Well, I think breakout in the -- in the ambassador's terms

means they have enriched enough uranium to a relatively low level that

if they have another facility where they could enrich it more highly,

that they have a -- they have enriched enough at a low level that they

could, in essence, throw out all the IAEA inspectors, change the

configuration of the -- of the cascades and the enrichment capability

and enrich it to a level where they could use it -- where they could

make it into weapons grade uranium.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you say you personally have no doubt that they

want weapons.

Can that weapons program be stopped with sanctions?

GATES: I think that what is critical is persuading the Iranians that

-- or leading them to the conclusion that their security will be

diminished by trying to get nuclear weapons rather than enhanced. And I

think that because of the election, we see fissures in Iran that we have

not seen before in the 30 years since the revolution. And I think that

severe sanctions, if the Iranian -- first of all, we -- we have created

a problem for the Iranians with this disclosure.

And so the first step is the meeting on October 1st with the P5 plus

one, with the Iranians, to see if they will begin to change their policy

in a way that is satisfactory to -- to the great powers.

And then, if that doesn't work, then I think you begin to move in the

direction of severe sanctions. And their economic problems are

difficult enough that -- that I think that severe sanctions would have

the potential of -- of bringing them change their -- their policies.

I think -- you asked me how long do I think we have?

I would somewhere between one to three years.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me turn, finally, to Guantanamo. We have just a

couple of minutes left. A major story in "The Washington Post"

suggesting that the president's deadline of January 22nd for closing

Guantanamo will not be met. And White House officials tell me that at

least some prisoners will still be in Guantanamo on January 22nd and beyond.

How big a setback is that and how long will it take to finally close

Guantanamo?

GATES: When the president elect met with his new national security

team in Chicago on December 7th...

STEPHANOPOULOS: 2009.

GATES: ...last year, this issue was discussed, about closing

Guantanamo and executive orders to do that and so on.

And the question was, should we set a deadline?

Should we pin ourselves down?

I actually was one of those who said we should because I know enough

from being around this town that if you don't put a deadline on

something, you'll never move the bureaucracy. But I also said and then

if we find we can't get it done by that time but we have a good plan,

then you're in a position to say it's going to take us a little longer

but we are moving in the direction of implementing the policy that the

president set.

And I think that's the position that (INAUDIBLE).

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's where we are.

So the deadline of January 22nd will not be met?

GATES: It's going to be tough.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And -- and how many prisoners will be there on January

22nd, do you know?

GATES: I don't know the answer to that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it -- but, as you said, it's going to be tough and

likely will not be met.

GATES: We'll see.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One -- one other deadline question. When you were

working for President Bush, you used to keep a countdown clock on your

desk, counting down the number of days you had left to serve.

Is that clock still there?

GATES: No. I threw the clock out. It was obviously useless.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're in it for the long haul?

GATES: We'll see. The president elect and I, when we first discussed

this, agreed to leave it open.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary Gates, thank you very much for your time today.

GATES: Thanks a lot.

CNN State of the Union:

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us.

We learned as the week came to an end about a new underground, secret Iranian nuclear bunker, and the president described it this way: "The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program." Tell us more about what we know, and do you have any doubt Iran was using this facility or planned to use this facility to develop nuclear weapons?

ROBERT GATES, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We've been watching the construction of this facility for quite some time. And one of the reasons that we waited to make it public was to ensure that -- that our conclusions about its purpose were right.

This is information shared among ourselves, the British, the French, as we've gone along.

And I think that certainly the intelligence people have no doubt that -- that this is an illicit nuclear facility, if only -- if only because the Iranians kept it a secret. If -- if -- if they wanted it for peaceful nuclear purposes, there's no reason to put it so deep underground, no reason to be deceptive about it, keep it a -- keep it a secret for a protracted period of time.

KING: Take me back in time. You say you've known about it for some time, dating back into the Bush administration. You, of course, were serving in the Bush administration. How far back?

GATES: Well, it's hard for me to remember, but at -- but at least a couple of years we've been watching.

KING: At least a couple of years? Because the former vice president, Dick Cheney, is on record as saying, in the closing months of the administration, he was an advocate for possibly using military action against some of these Iranian sites. Was this one of his targets, this facility we've just learned about?

GATES: Well, I think I'll just let his statement speak for itself.

KING: All right. We know -- and correct me if I'm wrong, please -- that you were skeptical about that, in fact, opposed to that. You didn't think that was the way to go. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has said publicly many times how skeptical he is about the military options here.

I just want you to help an American out there who says, "We can't trust Ahmadinejad. This has been going on for years. We don't think sanctions will work. Why don't we do something about it?" Explain to that person out there, whether they work in the United States Congress or whether it's just an average American, when you look at the contingencies that you have available to you, and the president has available to him, are there any good military options when it comes to these deep underground facilities?

GATES: Well, without getting into any specifics, I would just say we obviously don't take any options off the table. My view has been that there has been an opportunity through the use of diplomacy and economic sanctions to persuade the Iranians to change their approach to -- to nuclear weapons.

The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time. The estimates are one to three years or so. And the only way you end up not having a nuclear-capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons, as opposed to strengthened.

And so I think, as I say, while you don't take options off the table, I think there's still room left for diplomacy. The P5-plus-one will be meeting with Iran here shortly. The Iranians are in a very bad spot now because of this deception, in terms of all of the great powers. And there obviously is the opportunity for severe additional sanctions. And I think we have the time to make that work.

KING: I want to get to that, the diplomacy in just a minute, but when you shared this intelligence with others, I want to ask you specifically about the case of Israel, which you know in the past has been very skeptical about the diplomatic route. And many have thought perhaps Israel would take matters into its own hands because it is in the neighborhood.

What did the Israeli government, specifically the Israeli military, say when they learned of this intelligence about this new second facility?

GATES: Well, Israel obviously thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel. We've obviously been in close touch with them, as our ally and friend, and -- and continue to urge them to let this diplomatic and economic sanctions path play out.

KING: And as that goes forward, President Sarkozy was quite skeptical, and he was very clear: This year, December, he wants to see progress or else he'll seek tougher sanctions. From your perspective, what sanctions would have the most teeth, would work?

GATES: Well, there are a variety of options still available, including sanctions on banking, particularly sanctions on equipment and technology for their oil and gas industry. I think there's a pretty -- a pretty rich list to pick from, actually.

KING: If you look at that list, though, in some of those cases, you will find the suppliers, gasoline imports, some of the equipment and technology, would be China, would you not?

GATES: China's participation is clearly important.

KING: And -- and the early indications are they will or won't help?

GATES: Well, I haven't -- I haven't had an opportunity to talk to the president or those who were with him in Pittsburgh. So I don't know the nature of the conversations that they had with -- with the Chinese there. But I do have the sense that -- that the Chinese take this pretty seriously.

KING: Let me ask you about the situation in Iran as this diplomacy goes forward. You're the defense secretary now. You have been the director of central intelligence. When you look at post-election Iran, all the talk of turmoil, reports of tension between Ahmadinejad and the clerics, Ahmadinejad and the reformers, is the water bubbling or is the water boiling, in the sense, do you just see trouble or do you see potential seeds of revolution?

GATES: Well, I guess I would say it's simmering. It's clear in the aftermath of the election that there are some fairly deep fissures in Iranian society and politics and -- and probably even in the leadership. And, frankly, this is one of the reasons why I think additional and especially severe economic sanctions could -- could have some real impact, because we know that the sanctions that have already been placed on the country have had an impact. The unemployment among youth is about 40 percent. They have some real serious problems, especially with the younger people.

So I think that we are seeing some changes or some divisions in the Iranian leadership and -- and in society that we really haven't seen in the 30 years since the revolution.

KING: And if you think sanctions work -- and this is a clear violation, they hid this from the world, they hid this from everybody, in clear violation of their commitments -- why wait? Why not slap tougher sanctions now? Why wait until the end of the year?

GATES: Well, the opportunity exists in the October 1st meeting and over the next few weeks to see if we can leverage publicizing this additional illegal facility and activity to leverage the Iranians to -- to begin to make some concessions and begin to abide by the U.N. Security Council resolutions.

I think we are all sensitive to the possibility of the Iranians trying to run the clock out on us. And -- and so nobody thinks of this as an open-ended process.

KING: And so, lastly on this point, this facility, obviously, is not online yet. It is under construction, not online. So Iran's capability, in terms of being ready to perhaps have a nuclear bomb -- in the past, the public statements have been a year to three away. Is that still operational?

GATES: That would be my view.

KING: The defense secretary, Robert Gates. We'll be back in just a moment with another big decision facing the secretary and the president:

whether to send thousands more U.S. troops into Afghanistan. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back with the defense secretary, Robert Gates.

Very momentous decision, recommendation you will have to make to the president, the president will have to make to the nation about whether to send thousands, perhaps tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan. I want to start with a threshold question. Do you have full confidence in the commanding general, Stanley McChrystal, on the ground in Afghanistan now?

GATES: Absolutely. I think -- I think we have in General McChrystal the very best commanding officer we could possibly have there.

KING: Does the president share that?

GATES: I believe so.

KING: And then, is it a logical extension, then, to go on and say, if you have such full confidence, that if General McChrystal says, "I need 40,000 more troops," he will get them?

GATES: I think we are in the middle of a review. The president, when he made his decisions on strategy and Afghanistan at the end of March, said that, after the Afghan elections, that we would review where we are and review the strategy.

We now, in addition to that, have General McChrystal's assessment of the situation. He found a situation in Afghanistan that is more serious than -- than we had thought and that he had thought before going out there. So we're in the middle of a process of evaluating, really, the decisions the president made in late March to say, "Have we got the strategy right?" And once we're confident we have the strategy right, then -- then we'll address the question of additional resources.

KING: As you know, some of your friends on Capitol Hill are saying, "Why wait?" in the sense of, because of the ominous warnings General McChrystal sounds in his report, among them this: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term, over the next 12 months, while Afghan security capability matures risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

If the situation is that dire and he believes he needs more troops, why wait?

GATES: Well, first of all, I'd like to remember -- remind people that -- that the debate within the Bush administration over the surge took about three months, from October to December 2006. It's very important that we get this right. And -- and there is always a dialogue between the chiefs, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CENTCOM commander, and our commander in the field.

We had the same kind of dialogue with General Odierno about the timing of pulling our combat units out of -- out of Iraq and -- and a conclusion of all of that was actually for General Odierno to take some additional risk. And it has proved to work very well.

So the question is, there's got to be some dialogue between the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the commander of Central Command, as well as General McChrystal, and then a discussion among the president's national security team.

KING: You know the conversation in town, though. Some understand the surge debate find this one rather remarkable, in the sense that you now have General McChrystal, part of his report has leaked out saying he needs more troops. Admiral Mullen has testified to Congress recently he believes we're going to need more troops. Some see an effort to almost put the president in a box before he deals with the other issues.

If you have the military, the admiral and the generals on record saying we need more troops, does the president really have a choice to say no?

GATES: Well, I think the president always has a choice. He's the commander-in-chief. The reality is, do we need additional forces? How many additional forces? And to do what? And it's the "to do what" that I think we need to make sure we have confidence, we understand before making recommendations to the president.

KING: Help me on that point, because there's a lot of questions about the legitimacy of the election. Did President Karzai commit fraud to the level at which he perhaps has stolen the election? The political vacuum could be months. You may have to make your decision uncertain as to the political leadership in Afghanistan unless you wait. There could be a run-off; there could be contestments and challenges.

Would you prefer some sort of power-sharing arrangement to move past this vacuum?

GATES: Well, I don't think it's up to us to tell the Afghans how to organize their government. The reality is that you still have an election process playing out. You have the -- both the Afghan and the international election commissions evaluating the ballots. And if they come to a conclusion that -- that there was a -- a real winner, then I think it has legitimacy for both the international and the national -- and the Afghan audience.

But I think, above all, what's important is whether or not the government of Afghanistan has legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghans. All information that we have available to us today indicates that continues to be the case.

KING: Let's turn to the debate back home. You try to stay out of the politics, but it does influence what happens in this town, as you know. Growing number of people on Capitol Hill want a clearer exit strategy. They want benchmarks; they want to know where the end is. Some have even said -- a few -- but some have said we need a timeline to get U.S. troops out. And now a liberal organization that was very vocal in the Iraq political debate is urging its members to call the president, e-mail the White House, and say, "Don't send tens of thousands more U.S. troops to be stuck in a quagmire."

Is Afghanistan a quagmire?

GATES: I don't think so, and I think that, with a general like McChrystal, it won't become one. I think that we are being very careful to look at this as we go along. We've put out metrics so that we can measure whether or not we're making progress. And if we're not making progress, then we're prepared to adjust our strategy, just as we're looking at whether adjustments are needed right now.

So I think that -- that the notion of -- of timelines and exit strategies and so on, frankly, I think would all be a -- a strategic mistake. The reality is, failure in Afghanistan would be a huge setback for the United States. Taliban and Al Qaida, as far as they're concerned, defeated one superpower. For them to be seen to defeat a second, I think, would have catastrophic consequences in terms of energizing the extremist movement, Al Qaida recruitment, operations, fundraising, and so on. I think it would be a huge setback for the United States.

I think what we need is a strategy that we think can be successful and then to pursue it and pursue it with confidence and resolution.

KING: You mentioned the history, and you're a student of history, and you're on the record talking about how this did become a quagmire for the Soviets. They had about 120,000 troops in Afghanistan, and you have said many times the Afghan people began to view them as occupiers, not as friends. Where's the line for the United States so that you don't cross that very same line?

GATES: Well, I think the analogy with the situation with the Soviets really doesn't hold. The Soviets' presence in Afghanistan was condemned by virtually every country in the world. They conducted a war of terror against the Afghans. They probably killed a million Afghans, made 5 million of them into refugees, tried to impose an alien social and cultural change on the country.

So -- so the situations are completely different. And -- and I think that the -- I think the Afghans continue to see us as their ally and partner.

KING: General McChrystal, in an interview that will air on "60 Minutes" tonight, talks about the breadth and the geographic spread of the violence in Afghanistan, says, "There's a little more than I would have gathered." We've been at this nearly eight years. Why are we still surprised?

GATES: Well, I will tell you, I think that -- that the strategy that the president put forward in late March is the first real strategy we have had for Afghanistan since the early 1980s. And that strategy was more about the Soviet Union than it was about Afghanistan.

KING: That's -- you served in the Bush administration. That's a pretty broad damnation of the Bush strategy.

GATES: Well, the reality is, we were fighting a holding action. We were -- we were very deeply engaged in Iraq. I increased -- I extended the 10th Mountain Division the first month I was on this job in January of -- of '07. I extended -- I put another brigade into Afghanistan in the spring of 2007. And that's all we had to put in there. Every -- we were -- we were too stretched to do more. And I think we did not have the kind of comprehensive strategy that -- that we have now.

KING: And if it comes to the point of sending more in this time, if the president agrees and General McChrystal gets -- maybe it's 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 -- do we have the troops now?

If you needed 40,000, could you find them?

GATES: Well, I think if the president were to decide to approve additional combat forces, they really probably could not begin to flow until some time in January.

KING: We're about out of time. I want to ask you a couple of quick questions in closing.

One is do you see any chance now, because of the delays and the political problems, that the administration will be able to keep its promise to close GITMO, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, in one year, as promised?

GATES: Well, I think -- I think it has proven more complicated than -- than anticipated. I -- I will be the first to tell you that when the President-elect's national security new team met in Chicago and -- on December 7th, I was one of those who argued for a firm deadline, because I said that's the only way you move the bureaucracy in Washington. But

-- and if you have to extend that date, if at least you have a strong plan showing you're making progress in that direction, then this -- it shouldn't be a problem to extend it and we'll just see whether that has to happen or not.

KING: And, lastly, you've served eight presidents.

What makes this one unique?

Or is there anything unique when it comes to these decisions of war and peace?

GATES: He is very analytical. He is very deliberate about the way he goes through things. He wants to understand everything. He delves very deeply into these issues. I'm not going to get into comparing the different presidents. I very much enjoy working for this one.

KING: Mr. Secretary, thanks for your time.

GATES: Thank you.