US Politics: Why is Obama's Popularity Dipping?

In the Sunday Times of London this week, Christina Lamb observed that whilst Barack Obama is one of the most successful presidents in terms of passing legislation, his popularity has sunk to a new low.

A CBS/New York Times poll gives Obama an approval rating of 44%. Richard Nixon and George W Bush had ratings which were significantly lower, in the 20% range at their. The warning light for Obama is that, 18 months into their Presidencies, the approval ratings for Nixon and Bush were 58% and 62%.

The Obama Administration’s legislative record is the best since Franklin D Roosevelt’s. It has passed an economic stimulus package of almost $800 billion and has made an important start to health care legislation, although there will be challenges to the latter in the courts. The Finance Reform Bill, signed into law this week, will be the most significant finance regulatory package since the 1930s and undoes much of Ronald Reagan’s deregulation. After a slow reaction to the Louisiana oil rig disaster, Obama has shown leadership in bringing BP to the table and shaking out a huge compensation package. One would have expected the public to have some respect for these achievements.

So why are Obama’s ratings low? Recovery from the economic recession is slow and patchy. Unemployment at almost 10% remains high and is unlikely to improve for a while. Unsurprisingly, then, the President’s popularity suffers. Obama’s problem from Day One was that that the expectation bar was set so high in a shaky economy that no one could have cleared it.

There are other factor. Historically, it is not unusual for a Chief Executive to suffer as he approaches his first mid-term elections. Bill Clinton lost control of Congress in 1994 and had to contend with Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who ran away with the idea that he was now in charge of the government. Odd notion, but the Republicans did shut down the Federal Government twice in Clinton’s time.

The media's criticisms have an impact. The unreconstructed neo-conservative, Charles Krauthammer, is crowing in The Washington Post that “there is a run on Obama shares”. (For perspective, consider that Krauthammer slammed George W. Bush in 2001 slammed “W” for declaring a regime-change war on Iraq and not the real enemy of democracy, Iran.) Other far-from-conservative newspapers, such as The New York Times, are claiming that Obama is losing with the voters. Media observations cross the political aisle.

In a politically divided country, Obama is bound to be unpopular in Republican strongholds and with Republican voters. He is not the only one suffering from tensions: in 2010, some middle-of-the-road Republicans are having problems with Tea Party candidates. It is now a dog-eat-dog political world in the USA.

Obama’s win in 2008 found many Democrats winning Congressional seats that be difficult to hold two years later, given that these seats are Republican in all but name. However, what is surprising is that Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, has expressed publicly that Democrats might lose control of both Houses of Congress. Sitting Democrats have blamed Obama for this message and he is now viewed by some as an electoral liability. The President's coattails, for some in his party, are getting short.

Beyond all this, Perhaps the truth lies in the oddity that --- apart from the Clinton years, and perhaps not even then --- Democrats are not used to holding the Executive Branch. Perhaps they are uncomfortable with power. Whatever the reason, the Democrats are starting to take their of the 70s and 80s when they were a firing squad……standing in a circle.

UPDATED US "National Security": Revealing the Sprawl of "Top-Secret America"...in 2007 (Shorrock)

UPDATED 1030 GMT: The Washington Post has now published the third and final part of its series, a look at the "intelligence complex" in Fort Meade, Maryland.



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On Monday, as The Washington Post launched its high-profile three-part series, "Top Secret America", on the vase intelligence network not only within the Government but amongst private contractors, we noted: "Much of this was known by close observers of US politics and foreign policy years before that, soon after — and indeed before — a US invasion of Iraq which was marked by faulty intelligence, wayward covert action, and a distortion of effective (and legal) policy at home and abroad."

For all the information put forth by Dana Priest and William Arkin, it is worth noting --- since the series does not do so --- those who had already documented the expanding sprawl of "intelligence" in and beyond the National Insecurity State. One of those reporters is Tim Shorrock, who published articles in Salon, Mother Jones, and The Nation between 2003 and 2007 and then the book Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

Shorrock's view of the Post series?

[They] their best to obfuscate what contractors really do for US intelligence. They're eight years behind and still haven't caught up. Basically their stories are throwing big numbers at readers—such as the fact that of 854,000 people with top security clearances, 265,000 are contractors. But that's work that can be done by interns; there's virtually nothing in their series about the broader picture—like what it means to have private for-profit companies operating at the highest levels of our national security."

UPDATED The Perils of US Intelligence: A “Top-Secret World” Beyond Control (Priest/Arkin)
US “National Security”: More on the Sprawling “Top Secret America” (Priest/Arkin)

This is Shorrock's article, "The Corporate Takeover of US Intelligence",  from Salon in June 2007:

More than five years into the global "war on terror," spying has become one of the fastest-growing private industries in the United States. The federal government relies more than ever on outsourcing for some of its most sensitive work, though it has kept details about its use of private contractors a closely guarded secret. Intelligence experts, and even the government itself, have warned of a critical lack of oversight for the booming intelligence business.

On May 14, at an industry conference in Colorado sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. government revealed for the first time how much of its classified intelligence budget is spent on private contracts: a whopping 70 percent.

The DNI figures show that the aggregate number of private contracts awarded by intelligence agencies rose by about 38 percent from the mid-1990s to 2005. But the surge in outsourcing has been far more dramatic measured in dollars: Over the same period of time, the total value of intelligence contracts more than doubled, from about $18 billion in 1995 to about $42 billion in 2005.

"Those numbers are startling," said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and an expert on the U.S. intelligence budget. "They represent a transformation of the Cold War intelligence bureaucracy into something new and different that is literally dominated by contractor interests."

Because of the cloak of secrecy thrown over the intelligence budgets, there is no way for the American public, or even much of Congress, to know how those contractors are getting the money, what they are doing with it, or how effectively they are using it. The explosion in outsourcing has taken place against a backdrop of intelligence failures for which the Bush administration has been hammered by critics, from Saddam Hussein's fictional weapons of mass destruction to abusive interrogations that have involved employees of private contractors operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Aftergood and other experts also warn that the lack of transparency creates conditions ripe for corruption.

Trey Brown, a DNI press officer, told Salon that the 70 percent figure disclosed by Everett refers to everything that U.S. intelligence agencies buy, from pencils to buildings to "whatever devices we use to collect intelligence." Asked how much of the money doled out goes toward big-ticket items like military spy satellites, he replied, "We can't really talk about those kinds of things."

The media has reported on some contracting figures for individual agencies, but never before for the entire U.S. intelligence enterprise. In 2006, the Washington Post reported that a "significant majority" of the employees at two key agencies, the National Counterterrrorism Center and the Pentagon's Counter-Intelligence Field Activity office, were contractors (at CIFA, the number was more than 70 percent). More recently, former officers with the Central Intelligence Agency have said the CIA's workforce is about 60 percent contractors.

But the statistics alone don't even show the degree to which outsourcing has penetrated U.S. intelligence --- many tasks and services once reserved exclusively for government employees are being handled by civilians. For example, private contractors analyze much of the intelligence collected by satellites and low-flying unmanned aerial vehicles, and they write reports that are passed up to the line to high-ranking government officials. They supply and maintain software programs that can manipulate and depict data used to track terrorist suspects, both at home and abroad, and determine what targets to hit in hot spots in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such data is also at the heart of the National Security Agency's massive eavesdropping programs and may be one reason the DNI is pushing Congress to grant immunity tocorporations that may have cooperated with the NSA over the past five years. Contractors also provide collaboration tools to help individual agencies communicate with each other, and they supply security tools to protect intelligence networks from outside tampering.

Outsourcing has also spread into the realm of human intelligence. At the CIA, contractors help staff overseas stations and provide disguises used by agents working under cover. According to Robert Baer, the former CIA officer who was the inspiration for the character played by George Clooney in the film "Syriana," a contractor stationed in Iraq even supervises where CIA agents go in Baghdad and whom they meet. "It's a completely different culture from the way the CIA used to be run, when a case officer determined where and when agents would go," he told me in a recent interview. "Everyone I know in the CIA is leaving and going into contracting whether they're retired or not."

Read rest of article....

US "National Security": More on the Sprawling "Top Secret America" (Priest/Arkin)

The Washington Post has published the second part of the high-profile series by Dana Priest and William Arkin, based on two years of investigation, of the sprawling US "national security state", which now takes in hundreds of thousands of private personnel as well as Government employees:

In June, a stone carver from Manassas chiseled another perfect star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors.

US “National Security”: Revealing the Sprawl of “Top-Secret America”…in 2007 (Shorrock)
UPDATED The Perils of US Intelligence: A “Top-Secret World” Beyond Control (Priest/Arkin)

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. In interviews last week, both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta said they agreed with such concerns.

The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

It is also a system in which contractors are playing an ever more important role. The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. There is no better example of the government's dependency on them than at the CIA, the one place in government that exists to do things overseas that no other U.S. agency is allowed to do.

Private contractors working for the CIA have recruited spies in Iraq, paid bribes for information in Afghanistan and protected CIA directors visiting world capitals. Contractors have helped snatch a suspected extremist off the streets of Italy, interrogated detainees once held at secret prisons abroad and watched over defectors holed up in the Washington suburbs. At Langley headquarters, they analyze terrorist networks. At the agency's training facility in Virginia, they are helping mold a new generation of American spies.

Through the federal budget process, the George W. Bush administration and Congress made it much easier for the CIA and other agencies involved in counterterrorism to hire more contractors than civil servants. They did this to limit the size of the permanent workforce, to hire employees more quickly than the sluggish federal process allows and because they thought - wrongly, it turned out - that contractors would be less expensive.

Nine years later, well into the Obama administration, the idea that contractors cost less has been repudiated, and the administration has made some progress toward its goal of reducing the number of hired hands by 7 percent over two years. Still, close to 30 percent of the workforce in the intelligence agencies is contractors.

Read rest of article....

UPDATED The Perils of US Intelligence: A "Top-Secret World" Beyond Control (Priest/Arkin)

UPDATED 1500 GMT: Acting Director of National Intelligence David Gompert has put out an innocuous statement (at least it's not "anonymous", like the one fed to ABC's George Stephanopoulos --- see 1430 GMT) on the Washington Post story: "The reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know....The fact is, the men and women of the Intelligence Community have improved our operations, thwarted attacks, and are achieving untold successes every day."

With respect, Mr Gompert, perhaps the point of the story is the community "you know" but the one that you should know about, given its size and apparent consequences?

UPDATED 1430 GMT: Spencer Ackerman has a sharp take on the Washington Post "package", including not only the Priest/Arkin article but the linked source material:

US “National Security”: Revealing the Sprawl of “Top-Secret America”…in 2007 (Shorrock)
US “National Security”: More on the Sprawling “Top Secret America” (Priest/Arkin)

Dana Priest and William Arkin of The Washington Post have now published their much-anticipated exposéof the "top-secret world" of US intelligence services, which extends far beyond official bodies such as the Central Intelligence Agency.

It includes a searchable database cataloging what an estimated 854,000 employees and legions of contractors are apparently up to. Users can now to see just how much money these government agencies are spending and where those top secret contractors are located. Check out this nine-page list of agencies and contractors involved in air and satellite observations, for instance. No wonder it scares the crap out of Official Washington: it’s bound to provoke all sorts of questions — both from taxpayers wondering where their money goes, and from U.S. adversaries looking to penetrate America’s spy complex.

But this piece is about much more than dollars. It’s about what used to be called the Garrison State — the impact on society of a Praetorian class of war-focused elites. Priest and Arkin call it "Top Secret America" and it’s so big, and grown so fast, that it’s replicated the problem of disconnection within the intelligence agencies that facilitated America’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack. With too many analysts and too many capabilities documenting too much, with too few filters in place to sort out the useful stuff or discover hidden connections, the information overload is its own information blackout. “We consequently can’t effectively assess whether it is making us more safe,” a retired Army three-star general who recently assessed the system tells the reporters."

Glenn Greenwald has also posted a lengthy consideration of the implications of the "unchecked Surveillance State":  "The Real U.S. Government -- the network of secret public and private organizations which comprise the National Security and Surveillance State -- expands and surveills and pilfers and destroys without much attention and with virtually no real oversight or accountability."

On the insipid side of the ledger, ABC News celebrity anchorman George Stephanopoulos channels the inevitable anonymous "Administration source" trying to trash the story: "The database...is 'troubling'...[because] it could become a road map for adversaries."

Beyond the relative merits of these responses, notice the twist here in the 21st-century media world. The chatter is not about the newspaper article, as it would have been in olden days, but about an on-line database. That in itself is testament not only to the changed dynamics brought by the Internet but by the "traditional" media's hope for survival and relevance: the Post has put in extensive effort to frame this story as an ongoing resource for scrutiny of the US Government.

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POSTED 0730 GMT: Credit to Priest and Arkin for important journalism, based on research since 2008. However, much of this was known by close observers of US politics and foreign policy years before that, soon after --- and indeed before --- a US invasion of Iraq which was marked by faulty intelligence, wayward covert action, and a distortion of effective (and legal) policy at home and abroad. (Indeed, Arkin brought some of this to light, albeit in a blog tucked away on The Post's website.) Why did we not see such vital investigations on front pages then?

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation's security.

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.

Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department's most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered.

Read rest of article....

US Politics/Foreign Policy Transcript: Vice President Biden on "This Week" (18 July)

Vice President Joe Biden was interviewed by Jake Tapper on ABC television's "This Week" this morning.

Most of the discussion was on domestic policy and politics. The most significant aspect of the exchange on foreign policy --- indeed, about the only significant aspect, given that the opportunity to consider Iraq was largely wasted and that Tapper strayed into flamboyant questions about combatting "Islamic terrorism" --- was on Afghanistan.

And what's notable is how depressing the prospects are. The US media are running with Biden's fig leaf that a "few thousand" American troops will be out before the July 2011 deadline for withdrawal, but the wider picture i this interview is that --- only a few months after "victory" was proclaimed in the Marja offensive --- there is no image of advance:

JAKE TAPPER, HOST: I know that there are some in the White House who feel Wall Street reform, health care legislation, stimulus, and yet the public still overwhelmingly thinks this country is on the wrong track.

Are you not getting enough credit, you and the administration?

JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look, these are gigantic packages to deal with a gigantic problem we inherited. And the vast majority of the American people and a lot of people really involved don't even know what's inside the packages. And so you have, for example, Mr. [Senator John] Boehner already calling for the repeal of --- of the reform that just passed on Wall Street. People don't realize, in that reform, you know, you say, look, we've had meat inspection for 100 years ago, the meat packing companies didn't like it. Automobile safety 50 years ago.

People are going to look back on this very shortly and say, why shouldn't we have some consumer group in -- entity looking at whether or not you can give someone a mortgage with no down payment, with no -- with a teaser interest rate, with no documentation, etc.

So it is -- people don't know that. Just like people don't know a lot of what's going on in the Recovery Act, understandably, because this has been so much stuff that has been flowing our way. And -- and we're facing a bunch of guys who are good guys, but they're all about repeal and -- and repeat. Repeal what we're doing and go back, repeal the incentives for industry to invest in solar energy. Repeal the health care bill that allows you to keep your kid on your health care policy, precondi -- preexisting conditions can't deny you policies, etc.

It's just going to take time. This is Jan -- this is July. The election is not until November. And I think we're going to have to firmly make our case. I think we can make it and especially in the context of who's going to be opposing us.

Compared to the alternative, I think we're going to get a fair amount of credit by November and I think we're going to do fine.

TAPPER: So the reason you're not getting enough credit is because the public doesn't understand everything that's happened yet?

BIDEN: Well, nor could they or should they. Look, in the last six months of the Bush administration, they lost three million jobs. Before we got our economic package in place, another 3.7 million jobs were lost in the first six months we took office. The last six months of this year --- the first six months of this year, we created almost 600,000 private jobs, you know, in the private market. That's not nearly enough to make up for the eight million jobs lost in the recession. But people are going to start to focus on exactly what we're doing. And all -- look, I'm convinced, at least from sitting around my dad's kitchen table and -- and the people I grew up with is when things are really tough economically and the country is in trouble, all they want to know is, they -- they don't expect an answer, but they expect to be reassured that we're moving in the right direction.

That is...

TAPPER: But they don't think that we are.

BIDEN: No. No, they don't think now because I don't think they know the detail of what's going on.

For example, here you had the insurance industry spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make the health care bill out to be this God awful tragedy.

Now what's starting off to happen?

The health care numbers are going up.

Why?

Because they're figuring out that small businesses are going to get a 30 percent tax cut. They didn't know that because of all the advertising done.

So there's a lot --- and --- and I would use health care as an example. Health care has gone from a barrage of advertising against it, why it was so bad, just like Wall Street reform. The financial industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying against this this is an awful thing, it's government regulation. All it is, is rational control and the turning around of what the Republicans did, which is let Wall Street run wild.

People --- when you say to people, you know, we just went out and had a regulatory reform bill, where I come from, it's like, OK, what --- what does that mean?

They don't know what it means yet, understandably. And so I think it takes time, Jake.

TAPPER: There's that famous saying in Washington by Mike Kinsley that a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. Robert Gibbs experienced some of that this --- this past few days...

BIDEN: I've never had a gaffe.

TAPPER: You've never had an issue with gaffes.

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: No, I know. So you can't relate.

BIDEN: Yeah.

TAPPER: But --- but he said that enough seats are in the play in the House for the Democrats to possibly lose the House. Empirically true.

How bad are the losses going to be for Democrats?

BIDEN: I don't think the losses are going to be bad at all. I think we're going to shock the heck out of everybody. I really -- and I've been saying this now. I think even when you and I went down to North Carolina and you followed be on the recovery trip, I was saying it then. I am absolutely confidence --- confident when people take a look at the what has happened since we've taken office in November and comparing it to the alternative, we're going to be very --- we're going to be in great shape.

Here's the deal. What Robert Gibbs also said was what he believes, what I believe, what the president believes, we're going to win the House and we're going to win the Senate. We're not going to lose either one of those bodies.

And so, again, this is July. November and at the time, the most vulnerable time any public official finds himself in is when they have no opponent.

Look at Harry Reid. You know, I got --- I got kind of banged around for saying I think there was a 55 percent chance Harry Reid is going to win. Well, Harry Reid, when he was the --- you know, on the other side of the barrage of how bad Harry Reid was, was in trouble. Now Harry Reid, in the last poll, was up 7 points. I --- he I think he --- I --- I'd bet anything --- I'm not allowed to bet, but I'll bet Harry Reid wins. You're going to see that repeated.

So, that old --- to paraphrase Mark Twain, I think the --- the reports of our demise are premature.

TAPPER: The NAACP had a convention in the last week. And they passed a resolution saying that elements of the Tea Party are racist.

Do you think elements of the Tea Party are racist?

BIDEN: Well, the truth is that at least elements that were involved in some of the Tea Party folks expressed racist views. We saw that on television and it was turned --- but I don't think --- I don't --- I wouldn't characterize the Tea Party as racist. There are individuals who are either members of or on the periphery of some of their things, their --- their protests --- that have expressed really unfortunate comments. And, again, it was all over TV, all over your network, you know?

A black congressman walking up the stairs of the Capitol.

But I don't believe, the president doesn't believe that the Tea Party is --- is a racist organization. I don't believe that. Very conservative. Very different views on government and a whole lot of things. But it is not a racist organization.

TAPPER: One of the big issues in this election, in this mid-term election is the economy.

BIDEN: Yes.

TAPPER: Non-financial institutions are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash money that could be spent expanding, creating jobs...

BIDEN: Yes.

TAPPER: --- and they're not spending it on that --- that way. A lot of members of the business community in the last week or so have been saying the reason that money is not being spent on expansion or jobs is because the business community is convinced that the Obama administration is anti-business and they're worried about what legislation, what regulation is coming down the pike.

Why do you think they're not spending that money?

BIDEN: Three months ago, those same business leaders, they were in the White House in meetings with us saying, you know, you're going to be surprised on the up side how many people we're going to be hiring. I think that a couple of things have happened.

One, they didn't anticipate and no one anticipated the potential collapse of the European economy and the so-called Eurozone -- Greece and Spain and all of that. That put a real brake on an awful lot of people in terms of their optimism about where the world economy was going, because we're affected by that indirectly.

Secondly, I think that the very uncertainty they had is now been settled by the passage of the reforms. They didn't know which way they were going to go. They didn't know how much was going to happen.

So I think there is increased certainty now that the major reform they were worried about is law. It's passed. And they're going to know how to deal with it.

I think you see stabilization on the European side, in terms of the so-called euro and the Eurozone. And I think that's going to help.

So I think you're going to see them beginning to move.

TAPPER: You said that the stimulus is --- is working.

BIDEN: Yeah.

TAPPER: And you said earlier, in the past week, you talked about three million jobs being created by the stimulus...

BIDEN: Yeah.

TAPPER: --- so far. But since the stimulus passed, more than three million jobs have been lost. And before you took office, three million jobs were lost.

BIDEN: Yeah.

TAPPER: Was the stimulus, in retrospect, too small?

BIDEN: Look, there's a lot of people at the time argued it was too small. Actually, we...

TAPPER: A lot of people in your administration.

BIDEN: --- yes. A lot of people in our administration, a lot of --- I mean, you know, even some Republican economists and some Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman, who continues to argue it was too small. But, you know, there was a reality. In order to get what we got passed, we had to find Republican votes. And we found three --- three. And we finally got it passed.

So there is the reality of whether or not the Republicans are willing to play, whether or not the Republicans are just about repeal and repeat the old policies or they're really wanting to do something. And I --- I'm not --- I'm not --- you know...

TAPPER: So if you didn't have Republicans that you had --- if you didn't have the legislative reality...

BIDEN: I think what...

TAPPER: --- it would have been bigger?

BIDEN: I think it would have been bigger. I think it would have been bigger. In fact, what we offered was slightly bigger than that. But the truth of the matter is that the recovery package, everybody's talking about it having -- it's over. The truth is now, we're spending more now this summer than we --- I'm calling this the recovery --- the summer of recovery. We have two, three times as many highway projects going. We have significant investment in broadband for the first time now. It's starting to really ramp up because the contracts have been let. In high speed rail, in wind energy.

I mean, where are the new jobs going to come from?

And that's what we're laying the foundation for. And, again, this is a hard slog, man. And it's counter-intuitive. It's counter-intuitive to say someone sitting at a kitchen table in Claymont, Delaware, who lost their jobs by the way, we saved or created three million jobs and they pick up when we lost three million.

The truth is, over three million people who are now working would be out of work but for this. The truth of the matter is there's an overwhelming consensus that we're not losing jobs now, we're creating jobs. The argument's gone from losing jobs to are we creating them fast enough, not whether we're creating them. And nothing is fast enough till you get these people back to work.

TAPPER: Turning to Afghanistan...

BIDEN: Yeah.

TAPPER: --- which is foremost on a lot of Americans' minds, I want to read you a quote from Jonathan Alter's new book: "At the conclusion of an interview in his West Wing office, Vice President Biden was adamant in July of 2011, that we're going to see a whole lot of people moving out. 'Bet on it,' Biden said, as wheeled to leave the room, late for lunch with the president. He turned at the door and said once more, 'Bet on it.'"

Did you say that to...

BIDEN: I did say that.

TAPPER: --- to Jon Alter?

BIDEN: I did say that.

TAPPER: And what did you mean, a whole lot of people...

BIDEN: Well, what I said...

TAPPER: --- moving out?

BIDEN: --- if you read three or four paragraphs above that, Jonathan was making a very valid point. He was saying a lot in the military think they outmaneuvered the President to render the July date meaningless. And I was saying that's simply not true. The military signed on. Petraeus signed on. Everybody signed onto not a deadline, but a transition, a beginning of a transition.

TAPPER: But what does a whole lot of people moving out mean?

BIDEN: Well, what I was talking about was you have --- we're going to have over 100,000 people there and two...

TAPPER: More, right, if you include NATO troops?

BIDEN: Oh, yeah. I'm just talking about Americans.

TAPPER: Yes.

BIDEN: 140,000 people there. And there's going to be a drawdown of forces as we transition. There are 34 districts in Afghanistan and the plan is, as we train up the Afghanis, we are going to, beginning in August, say, OK, now you've got this province, we no longer have to have American or NATO forces in that province. There will be a transition.

And really what I was responding to was the idea that the president had been outmaneuvered. I was saying make it clear. And so it --- it wasn't so much numbers I meant. It could be as few as a couple thousand troops. It could be more. But there will be a transition.

TAPPER: Let's talk about the present in Afghanistan. Marjah did not [go] as well as hoped. Kandahar has been delayed.

How [are] you and the President, your new way forward in Afghanistan, where are we in that?

Are we --- are we losing?

Are we treading water?

Where are we?

BIDEN: It's too early to make a judgment. We don't even have all the troops of the so-called surge in place yet. That won't happen until August.

TAPPER: But it's not --- it doesn't seem like it's going...

BIDEN: No...

TAPPER: --- according to plan.

BIDEN: No, it is --- well...

TAPPER: We're losing a lot of troops.

BIDEN: Well, unfortunately, everyone knew that in these summer months, when they can infiltrate from Pakistan under the cover of foliage and the rest and it's open, that there would be more deaths. That's been the pattern. And now we're engaging them more and there are more deaths.

But we still believe that the policy that the military signed onto, put together initially, signed onto, is, in fact, going to work. And let me define what I mean by work. We are making considerable progress against al Qaeda, which is our primary target. We're taking out significant numbers of the leadership in al Qaeda. And we are, in the process, which is painfully slow and difficult, of training up Afghani forces in order to put them in a position they can deal with their own insurgents. There is, for the first time now, a real attempt and a policy of trying to figure out how to reconcile those in the Taliban who are doing it for the pay, who are not the Mullah Omars of the world, into the government of Afghanistan.

All of this is just beginning. And we knew it was going to be a tough slog. But I think it's much too premature to make a judgment until the military said we should look at it, which is in December.

TAPPER: There was a recent incident involving the commanding general --- now the ex-commanding general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal. And I just wondered, since you were one of the people mentioned disparagingly by his aides. I know he called you to apologize.

BIDEN: He did.

TAPPER: I'm wondering, what was your reaction when you...

BIDEN: I didn't take it personally at all. I really, honest to God, didn't, compared to what happens in politics, this is --- that was a piece of cake. And it wasn't so disparaging is that I --- I was the enemy. It wasn't that I --- I wasn't the clown. I was the guy who, in fact, was their problem, they thought. I'm not their problem. I agree with the policy the president put in place. But it was clear --- I was asked to and I did on my own survey, I think, six four star generals, including present and former, every single one said he had to go.

So we did --- we made --- the President made the right decision. He changed the personalities, but not the policy. He put the strongest guy in the U.S. military and a counter-insurgency policy in place.

So I think it was --- it was the absolutely necessary thing to do. The president didn't take it personally. I didn't. I met with McChrystal. The president met with McChrystal. He was --- he was really apologetic. He knew they had gone way beyond. But we also knew that if a sergeant did that, if a lieutenant did that, I mean no one could stay.

TAPPER: Why do you think they thought of you as the enemy, because you had been in favor of...

BIDEN: Well, because...

TAPPER: --- the counter-terrorism instead of the counter-insurgency?

BIDEN: --- they --- because I had been someone who --- who offered a plan that was different in degree. But, you know, again, I --- I --- someday I'll be able to lay out exactly what the plan I offered was. It would be inappropriate to do that because it was so close to what --- what, in fact, the plan ended up being that there was virtually no difference. But I got characterized because I was really very challenging to some of the assertions made.

If you notice, what we have is a counter-insurgency plan along the spine of the country, where the population is. It's not a nationwide counter-insurgency plan. We're not engaged in nation-building, which the original discussion was about. We have a rec --- we --- we have a date where we're going to go look and see whether it's working. And we have a timetable in which to transition.

All of those things were things I was supporting. All those things were --- so. And to --- to conclude, when --- when General Petraeus was picked the day in the office --- it was the day we were supposed to go downstairs into The Situation Room, they call it, to discuss the overall policy. Everyone was there. I pulled him aside and I said, David, there is no daylight between your position and mine.

And he said, I know that. Will you tell people that?

TAPPER: Let's switch over now to Iraq.

BIDEN: Yes.

TAPPER: This is your first news interview since returning from Iraq.

BIDEN: True.

TAPPER: There's a --- there's a tremendous stale mat --- stalemate there.

BIDEN: Yes.

TAPPER: Since the March elections, I believe the parliament there has only met for 20 minutes. And just this week in Washington, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Zebari, pleaded for more U.S. engagement. He said: "We believe that there's a role for more engagement to help, to encourage, to facilitate, not to pick and choose the next government or the next leader, but really to play a greater role in the process."

You once advocated for a three-way partition of Iraq because you were not confident that Iraq's government was capable of having a strong central government. You said: "The most basic premise of President Bush's approach that the Iraqi people will rally behind a strong central government headed by [Prime Minister] Maliki, in fact, looks out for their interests equitably is fundamentally and fatally flawed. It will not happen in anybody's lifetime here including the pages!"

So it's --- that was from 2007.

Is it possible that you were right back then...

BIDEN: No.

TAPPER: --- that it is just impossible...

BIDEN: --- and, by the way...

TAPPER: --- to have a centralized government...

BIDEN: No, it's --- I don't want to debate history here, but I never called for a partition. I called for a central government with considerable autonomy in the regions.

TAPPER: Three provinces.

BIDEN: Well, it was...

TAPPER: I'm...

BIDEN: --- not --- it wasn't even, it was to allow them more autonomy, like what's happening in Kurdistan right now, like what's happening in Anbar Province right now. And so what's happening here is, there is an election that's taken place. And what happened --- there's 325 plus members of what they call their core, their parliament. And no one party won more than 91 seats. The two major parties, one won 89 and one won 91 seats. That's Maliki and [Iyad] Allawi, Iraqiya and the State of Law, they call them.

They're in negotiations right now to figure out how to allocate the power within that government. In other words, share power. And it is about just that. And it's underway. And it's going to happen. There will be a central government with control of its foreign policy, with control of the military. But you will see that there are going to be significant amounts of autonomy in each of the areas that exist in these provinces. That's what their constitution calls for.

And, look, it took the Dutch six months to form a parliament the time before last. It took the --- the folks in the Netherlands six months, 280 some days, if I'm not mistaken. So this is --- and this is their first crack at democracy.

I used the phrase politics has broken out, not war. We're moving in that direction.

TAPPER: And the combat mission ends at the end of August.

BIDEN: Yes.

TAPPER: And can that happen even if there isn't an Iraqi government?

BIDEN: There is a transition government. There is a government in place that's working. Iraqi security is being provided by the Iraqis, with our assistance. We're going to have --- still have 50,000 troops there. We will have brought home 95,000. There is no one in the military who thinks there's any reason we can't do that

So they're making real serious progress. I don't have a doubt in my mind that we'll be able to meet the commitment of having only 50,000 troops there and it will not in any way affect the physical stability of Iraq.

TAPPER: You spoke to the leader of Southern Sudan...

BIDEN: I did.

TAPPER: --- recently.

BIDEN: Kiir.

TAPPER: And the referendum on whether or not Southern Sudan can break away from Sudan takes place in January. There's a lot of concern by human rights groups that that election will be riddled with fraud, just like the ones in April.

BIDEN: A legitimate concern.

TAPPER: The White House's point man on the Sudan is in the --- has said that the U.S. has waning influence in the region, General Gration said that.

Are you willing to pledge that the U.S. will make sure that they're --- that war does not break out between Sudan and Southern Sudan should that happen?

BIDEN: We're doing everything in our power to make sure this election on the referendum is viewed by the world as legitimate and fair. That's why we've been pushing the UN. That's why we've been pushing Kiir. That's why I've been working with [South African President] Mbeki. That's why I've been working with President Mubarak, all who have significant influence in this.

And it must be viewed as credible to keep that country, that region, from deteriorating. The last thing we need is another failed state in the region. And I'm still hopeful. We are on it full-time. And --- I believe that we'll be able to pull --- they'll be able to pull off, with our help and the UN's help, they'll be able to pull off a credible election.

TAPPER: What's the larger strategy for combating Islamo-terrorism or Islamic fascism, as some people call it?

Even if Iraq works, even if Afghanistan works, it pops up everywhere. It pops up in Yemen. It pops up in Somalia. It pops up in Uganda.

What's the larger vision?

How does the U.S. combat that?

BIDEN: The larger vision is to appeal to the moderate Islamic states and the moderate Muslim world, which is the vast majority of the world. That's the first piece.

The second piece is, in those areas which the radicals can feed on and breed off of is to try to help stabilize those governments, not alone, but with the rest of the world. And part of that is building strong countries around them, as well as inside.

And it's a long-term deal. But I think we're making progress. And President Obama ju--- you know, I got asked the other day, you know, well, you ran for President, you know, you're Vice President. I said we got the order right. Even if I had been a great President and been elected, it would have taken me four years to do what he did in one month. In one month, he changed the attitude of the world about American intentions.

And the Muslim world and the moderate Muslim world no longer thinks it's us or them. The most important one that we're finishing up now, God willing, is Iraq. Imagine Iraq as a stable country in the midst of that part of the world, a very positive outcome.

TAPPER: Mr. Vice President, thanks for spending your time with us.

BIDEN: Thank you, Jake.