TDS Time Machine | Secretaries of Defense

Summary

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Episode: TDS Time Machine | Secretaries of Defense
Date: December 6, 2025
Host: John Oliver (for Jon Stewart)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Daily Show’s “Time Machine” series features interviews with three former U.S. Secretaries of Defense—Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, and Leon Panetta. Through a mix of satire, candid conversation, and pointed questions, John Oliver (sub-hosting) explores critical issues around U.S. military policy, the legacy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, bureaucratic dysfunction, the role of Congress, and the larger challenges facing American governance and decision-making about war and peace. The discussions are interspersed with biting humor and moments of reflection on the broader lessons of post-9/11 American foreign policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Donald Rumsfeld Interview: The Iraq War, Intelligence, and Administration Accountability

[01:18 - 13:00]

• Certainty vs. Skepticism in the Bush Administration

  • Oliver presses Rumsfeld on the administration’s public posture of certainty regarding Iraq’s WMDs:

    “Certainty with power can be dangerous. True or false?” (John Oliver, 02:24)

  • Rumsfeld contends internal deliberations were full of questioning—not arrogance:

    “What you will see is the absence of certainty... probing, questioning, wondering.” (Donald Rumsfeld, 03:30)

  • Oliver counters, noting the difference between internal doubt and the public face of certainty leading into war.

• The “Parade of Horribles”

  • Rumsfeld describes having prepared a memo outlining worst-case scenarios, including not finding WMDs and the war lasting years:

    “One of them was there might not be weapons of mass destruction.” (Donald Rumsfeld, 09:08)

  • He presented these risks to the President and NSC, but they weren’t extensively discussed.

• Intelligence, Presentation, and Public Persuasion

  • Oliver challenges the impression left on the public that there was overwhelming evidence and consensus for war:

    "The effort that the administration exuded was more geared towards making the case...than examining [the risks]." (John Oliver, 11:04)

  • Rumsfeld tries to clarify he did not personally advocate for certain intelligence offices (like the Office of Special Plans).

• Humorous Exchanges

  • Oliver’s satire cuts the tension, e.g.:

    “On the coast, we just curse and have gay sex. That’s all we do. I just run around...cursing and gay sexing each other.” (John Oliver, 06:12)

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2. Robert Gates Interview: Bureaucracy, War Fatigue, and the Limits of American Power

[13:47 - 25:08]

• Washington Dysfunction and Memoirs

  • Gates addresses why his memoir attracted controversy:

    “I'm pretty blunt and candid about the mess in the place...I had to wage war against the Congress, against my own building, and at times against the White House.” (Robert Gates, 14:40)

• Congress and Political Polarization

  • Gates and Oliver bemoan Congress’s theatrics:

    “The effect of the red light on a television camera going on has the same effect on members of Congress as a full moon does on werewolves.” (Robert Gates, 17:34)

• Strategic Mistakes and the Use of Force

  • Gates warns America's overreliance on military solutions:

    “Presidents have been too quick to reach for a gun to solve [foreign problems]. ... We need to be a lot more careful...and be willing to admit that we don't understand unintended consequences.” (Robert Gates, 18:35)

  • He cautions against the assumption that “all wars will be short and we’ll be in and out.”

• On American "Indispensability"

  • Gates balances recognition of American leadership with humility:

    “I do believe we're an indispensable nation. … But...we can't solve every problem.” (Robert Gates, 20:19)

• Veterans Affairs Bureaucracy

  • Gates describes battling the VA as harder than Defense bureaucracy, with Congress micromanagement as a prime obstacle:

    “Changing anything that has to do with dealing with veterans requires, literally, an act of Congress.” (Robert Gates, 22:10)

  • On accountability:

    “I fired the commander of the hospital, the surgeon general of the Army, and the secretary of the Army. That got people's attention.” (Robert Gates, 24:05)

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3. Leon Panetta Interview: Modern Military Challenges, Policy Incoherence, and Political Dysfunction

[26:19 - 45:57]

• CIA and Military Decision-Making

  • Discussing the reality vs. rhetoric in the fight against ISIS:

    “We are going to confront ISIS. We're going to put troops on the ground in Iraq to try to train the Iraqi security force...” (Leon Panetta, 29:27)

  • Oliver pokes holes in the ambiguous definitions:

    “He's not troops on the ground though. We're calling them advisors.” (John Oliver, 29:27) “Yeah, but they wear boots.” (Leon Panetta, 29:31)

• On Incoherent Strategy

  • Oliver challenges the muddled Middle East policy, noting conflicting approaches in Iraq and Syria.

• Congressional Abdication

  • Panetta criticizes Congress for not asserting its role:

    “Unfortunately, this Congress has a hard time trying to find the bathrooms in the Capitol.” (Leon Panetta, 32:18)

• Lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan

  • Panetta rejects simplistic solutions like keeping troops or dividing Iraq:

    “The Sunnis didn't like it. The Shias didn't like it. The Kurds didn't like it. They said, 'We have a country, we want to keep it a country...’" (Leon Panetta, 37:56)

  • Emphasizes the importance of indigenous leadership and the limitations of external influence.

• Dysfunction in Washington as a Security Threat

  • Panetta states that political dysfunction is the greatest threat:

    "The biggest security threat right now to the country is the dysfunction in Washington." (Leon Panetta, 39:49) “We govern in a democracy either by leadership or crisis. If leadership is there...if not, we govern by crisis. And very frankly, today we largely govern by crisis.” (Leon Panetta, 40:20)

• Need for Bipartisanship and Reflection on Better Eras

  • Panetta recalls past eras in Congress where leaders genuinely cooperated for national interest.

    “They fought each other politically, but when it came to issues...they were willing to work together.” (Leon Panetta, 43:03)

  • Ends on a call for leadership with “honor” and “integrity,” citing military sacrifice as a model.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Power and Certainty:

  “Certainty with power can be dangerous.”
  — John Oliver [02:24]

• On Congressional Grandstanding:

  “The effect of the red light on a television camera...has the same effect on members of Congress as a full moon does on werewolves.”
  — Robert Gates [17:34]

• On Strategic Failure in the Middle East:

  “We need to be a lot more careful when we deploy our forces...and be willing to admit that we don't understand unintended consequences.”
  — Robert Gates [18:35]

• On the Dysfunction of the VA System:

  “Changing anything that has to do with dealing with veterans requires, literally, an act of Congress.”
  — Robert Gates [22:10]

• On Congressional Dysfunction as a National Threat:

  “The biggest security threat right now to the country is the dysfunction in Washington.”
  — Leon Panetta [39:49]

• On Real Bipartisanship:

  “They played politics, they fought each other in elections, but when it came to those big issues...they were willing to work together on behalf of the country.”
  — Leon Panetta [43:03]

• John Oliver’s Satirical Summation

  “On the coast, we just curse and have gay sex. That’s all we do.”
  — John Oliver [06:12]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:18] — Start of Rumsfeld interview: Iraq War and intelligence issues.
• [04:13] – [05:10] — Certainty vs. skepticism discussion.
• [09:01] — Rumsfeld discusses “Parade of Horribles” memo.
• [13:47] — Start of Robert Gates interview: Bureaucratic obstacles and candor.
• [17:34] — Gates's “Congress as werewolves” quote.
• [18:35] — Gates on America’s overreliance on military solutions.
• [22:10] – [24:05] — Dysfunction in Veterans Affairs.
• [26:19] — Start of Leon Panetta interview: Modern security threats and incoherent strategy.
• [29:27] — Defining “troops on the ground.”
• [32:18] — Panetta on Congressional incapacity.
• [37:56] — Iraq’s refusal to split along ethnic lines.
• [39:49] — Dysfunction in D.C. as a security threat.
• [43:03] — Era of functional bipartisanship.
• [45:46] — Panetta on military sacrifice and need for political courage.

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Conclusion

The episode delivers a multifaceted—and often humorous—retrospective on the past two decades of American defense and war policy. Through the voices of three Secretaries of Defense and John Oliver’s incisive interrogation, listeners get a revealing look at the persistent challenges of selling war to the public, bureaucratic inertia, failures in congressional leadership, and the enduring tension between American power and humility. The conversation closes with a somber reminder: America's most significant adversary may be its own dysfunctional political system, and real progress requires a return to leadership and national unity.

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Transcript

[John Oliver]

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[Leon Panetta]

You're listening to Comedy Central.

[John Oliver]

I got tonight. Served as secretary of defense in two different presidential administrations, most recently under George W. Bush. His new memoir is called Known and Unknown. Please welcome to the program Donald Rumsfeld. Sir.

Nice to see you. Thank you. Please come and join us.

Thank you.

Please. Thank you. Thank you for being here. We appreciate it. The book is Known and unknown. And that's you right there in a.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Vest in Taos, New Mexico.

[John Oliver]

Is that Taos, New Mexico? Lovely place, by the way. Obviously, you know, elephant in the room, tension between. I think I know why you're here. And let me just deflate the tension right off the bat. Apology accepted.

And now we can move on. Have a nice day, a nice conversation. I know this has been troubling you for some time now.

I do. Thank you for being here. I don't even know where to start. So let's start with Iraq.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Okay. Why am I not surprised?

[John Oliver]

I don't know. I will take your stony silence as acceptance.

There's an interesting quote that you had in the book about John Ehrlichman, who was in the Nixon White House. And you worked with Ehrlichman.

And you say to him about him, he seemed to have a high degree of certainty about his views that bordered on arrogance, a trait that did him no favors as he gathered more influence in the White House. Certainty without power can be interesting, even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous. And I thought, boy, if there was ever a solid critique of how I felt about the administration you served under, under President Bush, it would be that certainty with power is dangerous. True or false.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

If you go to the website that I put up, rumsfeld.com There are hundreds of documents, thousands of pages, and what you will see Is the absence of certainty. You will see probing, questioning, wondering, do we have enough information? Are there more things we ought to know? It's quite exactly the opposite.

[John Oliver]

If you would go to my TiVo.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

He doesn't think I know what that means.

[John Oliver]

What I think you. You said rumspelt.com. you're way ahead of me, brother. I'm still licking stamps and putting them on envelopes and hoping it gets to wherever it's going.

I think there is. I guess I'm drawing a distinction perhaps, between the internal deliberations.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Right.

[John Oliver]

And what was presented to the American public. Because presented to the American public was a picture of not just relative certainty, certainty bordering on arrogance. And there was a dismissiveness to anyone who would challenge that certainty.

Not how you remember it.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

It isn't at all, really. I mean, I know what was going through my mind and I know the kinds of questions the President would ask and the questions that Colin Powell or Condi Rice or the Vice President would ask. And there was a searching, there was lots of questions.

[John Oliver]

A yearning, if you will.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Well, it's not quite the word I would have used.

[John Oliver]

Do you. So you disagree that the administration showed a face of certainty when it came to the intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war? Is that.

[Leon Panetta]

No.

[John Oliver]

Now we're in that respect.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

You're exactly right. There's no question but that the intelligence community presented that information. Colin Powell made the presentation at the United Nations. He spent. He probably had as much experience dealing with intelligence products as anyone in the government, including the Director of CIA. He spent days on it. He worked hard on it. He believed every word he said. And yet he. And he presented it that way. Now, intelligence always is never perfect. I mean, it's always questioned. You have to question it.

[John Oliver]

Did you guys know intelligence was never perfect?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Oh, my goodness, yes.

[John Oliver]

I feel like we're just sitting on a porch now sipping lemonade.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

I said what I shouldn't have said.

[John Oliver]

Oh, my goodness.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Oh, my goodness.

[John Oliver]

G willikers. Let me say that he makes fun of me talking.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

He makes fun of that. But there are a lot of people in the heartland of America who talk like I do.

[John Oliver]

No, I don't.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Maybe not on the coast, but in the heartland they do.

[John Oliver]

Yes. On the coast, we just curse and have gay sex. That's all we do. I just run around.

Cursing and gay sexing each other.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

No, Let me go back to Colin Powell. Right.

[John Oliver]

Powell was not the only one. To be fair. Of course not everybody came out.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

The President made the decision. Colin Powell made the Presentation. There was no one in the NSC who disagreed with that.

[John Oliver]

Well, I would take issue with some of that before, for instance, the linkage between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in terms of the intelligence.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

There wasn't much of a linkage at all. Thank you.

[John Oliver]

We didn't hear that, though. What we heard was there is a direct link. You cannot talk about the war on terror. You even came out and talked about how this fellow. You didn't mention his name, but Al Libi had described training that had been occurring from Iraq to Al Qaeda.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

For there had been training camps and there was an Al Qaeda connected group called Ansar al Islam up in Kermal that was actually preparing chemicals. And we found traces of ricin and potassium chlorate. Thereafter, after major combat operations and Saddam hussein was giving $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. And he'd been on the question.

[John Oliver]

He was doing that.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

He'd been on the State Department terrorist list.

[John Oliver]

No question he was on that list. I think my ultimate point, and I guess I'm somewhat getting to it, is there was no real momentum for a war in Iraq. We had to focus the country on that. Afghanistan didn't take much convincing. People, I think were behind that.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

That's fair.

[John Oliver]

So the White House and the Defense Department and the State Department had to coordinate a pretty extraordinary effort to gather information and convince America that this was in our best interest to do so.

And would it be fair to consider that in the effort that it took to sell us this.

That we lost our sellers alert? Let me back up in the effort it took the administration to present.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

I'm just trying to help you.

[John Oliver]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Oh, if only I had talked to you before.

Okay. Not sell. I wouldn't say present because they did not present. They gave us again. They were pretty certain when it came out, all the deliberation had been done. So it wasn't. They were.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

You want to know what I did at one point?

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

In the book I talk about it. I sat down and prepared a list of all the things that could go wrong.

[John Oliver]

The Parade of Horribles.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Exactly. And one of them was there might not be weapons of mass destruction.

[John Oliver]

That's right.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

And another one was it might last six or eight years.

[John Oliver]

And did you star those?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

No. No, I didn't. And I didn't believe them. But I just knew that one irrational person had to sit down and say, what are the things that could go wrong?

[John Oliver]

Great.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

And I presented it to the President and to the National Security Council.

[John Oliver]

Right.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Could I give You. A little background?

[John Oliver]

No. A rational. But wouldn't a rational person. So you presented. I guess what I'm saying is the effort on presenting us the information of certainty that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat that had weapons of mass destruction capability and was in the process of disseminating that to al Qaeda operatives. The effort to present that.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

You've overstated.

[John Oliver]

Mm.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Yeah. Promise.

Goodness gracious.

[John Oliver]

Do you want to. Does the. Does the. All right, we're going to go to commercial. We'll come back and I will finish. I will try and recalibrate me. Yes.

We'll be right back with more with.

[Leon Panetta]

Donald Rumsfeld right afterwards.

[John Oliver]

Welcome back. We're talking with Donald Rumsfeld. I guess what I'm trying to get to is this. You had a memo of Parade of horribles.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Mm.

[John Oliver]

It was two pages or three pages.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

I don't know.

[John Oliver]

It was about 30 or 40 horribles.

But you had a year of possible. Possible horribles.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Yeah. I didn't know. No, I just said, you don't know.

[John Oliver]

If that parade's going to happen. It could be the Puerto Rican Day parade. Nobody knows. It'll be the imperative. But my point is, it seemed that the effort that the administration exuded was more geared towards making the case of why we had to do this than examining your memoir. You say yourself in the book, I gave the memo to the nsc. I don't know what happened to it.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Not quite.

[John Oliver]

You gave the memo to the nsc? But they didn't really pay attention.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Individuals did. And people did make preparations for some of those things. Certainly we did in the department.

There were not extensive meetings on them.

[John Oliver]

But that's my point.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Fair enough.

[John Oliver]

The White House Iraq Group met weekly. The group that was assigned the job of coordinating the presentation about going to war in Iraq met weekly.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

I guess so. I don't know. That would have been at a different level. The NSC met frequently.

[John Oliver]

Did they tell you anything?

You poor man.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

No, I don't know what.

[John Oliver]

Are you not on the email list? Do they not. Are you not cc'd?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

I was in National Security.

[John Oliver]

Iraq. No, I'm telling you.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

No, I know that.

[John Oliver]

Did you know?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

You don't need to tell me.

[John Oliver]

You created a whole office to deal with intelligence within the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans. Did you know that?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

I did. You told me you recommended it. I did not.

[John Oliver]

You didn't recommend that office?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

No.

[John Oliver]

Did you have any power?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Sure. A lot.

[John Oliver]

You did have a lot of power?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Sure.

[John Oliver]

So if they said to you, can we create a special Office called the Office of Special Plans to deal with intelligence. You could say there's 3 million. I don't think that's a good idea.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

There are 3 million people in that operation, and everyone did not ask me everything they were going to do. They were delegated large chunks of responsibility.

[John Oliver]

You're Under Secretary Doug Feith, though, is.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

And they were very good people, and they did a good job.

[John Oliver]

Well, let's not get crazy.

I just want to tell you this. I really do appreciate you at least having the conversation and having at least the ability to sit and.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Why do you say at least twice?

[John Oliver]

Nicely done.

I really do appreciate it.

And I know you have to go and your time is valuable, and I do thank you for being here. Known and Unknown is on the bookshelves now. Donald Rumfeld, sir, thank you.

[Commercial Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by.

[John Oliver]

Oops.

[Commercial Announcer]

I've got a box of Cheez It Crackers staring at me, and I just wanted that irresistible Cheesy crunch. Sorry, that was a total snackcident.

[Leon Panetta]

Mmm.

[Commercial Announcer]

What was I supposed to be talking about? So salty, so crunchy, so cheesy. Whoops. Lost my train of thought. I've heard of brain freeze, but brain cheese? Mm. I'll just have one more cheese at Cracker, and then I'll get back to it.

[John Oliver]

My guest tonight, he was the secretary of defense in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. His new book is called Memoirs of a Secretary at War. Please welcome to the program. Robert Gates. Sir, thank you for being here.

[Commercial Announcer]

Thank you.

[John Oliver]

The book is. Now, obviously.

You'Ve suffered an accident. Apparently you wrote about Chris Christie and there was retribution.

[Robert Gates]

Actually, I finally brought about bipartisan action. Retribution?

[John Oliver]

Yes, retribution. People are very angry at you inside Washington for having the temerity to write a memoir.

I'm not exactly sure why, because many people write memoirs about their time in Washington. Why do you think you face such scrutiny for this?

[Robert Gates]

Well, I think, first of all, I'm pretty blunt and candid about the mess in the place. And as I say, it's really not just about the fact that I was brought to Washington to try and salvage two wars, but I had to wage war against the Congress, against my own building, Department of Defense, and at times against the White House, often just to get the right things done in terms of support for. For our men and women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even such horrible things as cutting the defense budget.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Right.

[John Oliver]

And they, you know. Have you been surprised that the media has glommed onto maybe the more sensationalist aspects?

[Robert Gates]

Well, not surprised. You know, I've been around too long for that. But I think that the, I think, you know, people have kind of proven one of the points in the book, which is Washington is so polarized that absolutely everything is used to prove one political point or another. So people have cherry picked individual quotes if it supports their position. So there's stuff in this book. If you're for Bush, there's stuff. If you're against him, there's material. Same thing with President Obama. But I think it's a very honest account and I basically wrote it for all those kids who served to show them, among other things, the passion and strong feelings that both presidents had about these wars and about the tough decisions they had to face.

[John Oliver]

Right. And to see it sensationalized like that in the media for conflict, it was upsetting to me. I mean, I think for me the big question is who's better?

You know, and I guess you could just answer that, just Bush just, I guess nod once or Obama just do that or however you want to name it.

[Robert Gates]

How about puntic?

[Leon Panetta]

But.

[John Oliver]

It is, it's very interesting.

How Congress, like you say, if you're one for one political party or another, you can find things about Obama, you can find things about Bush that are positive or negative. Congress almost universally comes out looking venal and small. And I thought, boy, that sounds accurate.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

That sounds.

[Robert Gates]

And what a revelation.

[John Oliver]

And what a revelation.

[Robert Gates]

I'm sure this comes as new news to the entire American people.

[John Oliver]

What do you, I mean, is there.

[Robert Gates]

A sense where I, where I get into it is in the specifics.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Robert Gates]

On how they are that way?

[John Oliver]

Well, it's, it's oftentimes when you'd be testifying in front of Congress in terms of progress on, on these various situations and they would behind the scenes be somewhat thoughtful and circumspect and then in front of the cameras be complete braying idiots.

[Robert Gates]

Well, I say in the book that the effect of the red light on a television camera going on has the same effect on members of Congress as a full moon does on werewolves.

[John Oliver]

That's a good point. Now.

One of the things, you know, the bureaucracy of it, the strategy of it, all that stuff is very fascinating. But on a, more on a global picture.

The idea of, you know, you see what's going on in Iraq right now, it has deteriorated once again into terrible violence. Afghanistan as well. Does it point to an idea maybe that America fell a little bit too in love with a Marshall Plan idea after Iran, after wars, and that we're applying lessons we learned in World War II to these new fights in the Middle east, and they are not applicable. And that strategy is doomed to failure to some extent.

[Robert Gates]

One of the points that I make in the book is that in recent decades, I believe presidents, when confronted with a foreign challenge or a foreign problem, have been too quick to reach for a gun to solve it. I said in another book I wrote 15 years ago that the dirty little secret in Washington is that the biggest doves wear uniforms, right? Because they have seen war and they have seen the consequences. And they have also been sent into battle, sent into conflict, and seen political support evaporate because of political leadership, the lack of political leadership or whatever. So one of the themes in the book is that we need to be a lot more careful when we deploy our forces and when we use military force and be willing to admit that we don't understand unintended consequences and that we know very little, usually, about our adversaries. And we make assumptions like all wars will be short and we'll be in and out. That's 12 years after we went into Afghanistan. So I think there are some cautionary tales in the book that I hope will have some relevance as we look at the problem in Syria, we look at the issues with Iran that you were discussing.

[John Oliver]

Do you think it is that? Because that immediately. That's what springs to mind. Because you bring up an interesting point, and it's a point that has been brought up by cyclically. You know, Eisenhower was very clear about military industrial complex and that you build this machine and someone's going to want to use it on another country. Does it trouble you then to see there's a certain rigidity in the way that we look at the world and the way that we look at American power as being infallible?

[Robert Gates]

Well, we have more power than anyone else in the world. I do believe we're an indispensable nation. There's really not any major international problem that can be solved without the United States being involved or leading the effort. But the reality is we can't solve every problem. And every time there is an oppression or some terrible thing happens internationally, the answer is not necessarily to send in American troops. We need to pay more attention.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Let's go.

[John Oliver]

We're going to take a commercial battle. More with Robert Gates. The book is Call of Duty. We'll be right back.

Hey, welcome back to the show. We're talking to former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. I want to talk to you about. You know, you have in these years as the Secretary of Defense for Bush and for Obama, faced down pretty fearsome adversaries, the Iraq war, reconstruction, the Taliban resurgence. But you talk about a battle, you fight with a really terrifying opponent, the VA bureaucracy.

Why is it so difficult to take care of our men and women when they come home in the manner that they deserve? And why is it. Why can we move heaven and earth to.

Why can we mobilize so quickly and so well for intervention but not for.

Backlogs of paperwork? Why is that difficult?

[Robert Gates]

I write in the book that the only bureaucracy in Washington that is even more intractable than the Department of Defense is Veterans Affairs. And you can have, I think, a very effective secretary like General Shinseki, who is the secretary now and has been since the beginning of the administration, who is absolutely committed to getting things right. But getting it down through that bureaucracy and getting people willing to change the way they do business is very difficult. But there's another aspect to it, and it brings us back to one of the principal culprits, and that's the Congress. The Congress has micromanaged Veterans affairs in such a way that changing anything that has to do with dealing with veterans requires, literally, an act of Congress. So we would try pilot programs where we would expedite disability evaluations and things like that, but to be able to apply and get them done in 100 or 150 days, rather than a year or two years or three years or more. But we couldn't expand that once we showed it would work without a change in the law. And that proved almost insurmountable, even.

[John Oliver]

But in the case of. So you were presiding there.

[Robert Gates]

This is an interesting case in Washington, because in this case, it's not for a lack of money.

[John Oliver]

Not for lack of money, and not for a lack of desire. The people who work at the va, I met a lot of these people. They're good people. They want to help the veterans. They are as trapped in this byzantine system as anybody other than those waiting. But you talk about in the book, the revelations when Walter Reed Hospital, when they found out that the conditions that the veterans were living in were substandard, you jumped in there. There was two committees that immediately went to work there. You changed the culture almost on a dime. Things changed almost immediately. Why can't we do a surge like that for the paperwork backlogs to get these guys their benefits? It's hard to fathom.

[Robert Gates]

One of the reasons things changed almost immediately was because I fired the commander of the hospital, the surgeon General of the army, and the secretary of the Army.

That got people's attention. And part of the problem in Washington is the unwillingness to hold individuals accountable for performance. And I tried to do that.

I noticed in the headlines in the last day or so that there's more trouble with the Air Force nuclear program. I fired both the Air Force chief of staff and the Air Force secretary for their unwillingness to tackle problems in the nuclear program. So you got to, whether it's Veterans affairs or anyplace else, and it's not just at the top. You've got to be willing to hold people accountable and show that there are consequences for not getting the job done.

[John Oliver]

And yeah, I mean, I agree. Can you stick around for a little bit? We'll talk a little bit.

It's on the boot shelves now. Robert Gates, we'll be right back on THE Web A little bit more.

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You're basking on a beach in the Bahamas. Now you're journeying through the jade forests of Japan. Now you're there for your alma mater's epic win. And now you're awake.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Womp, womp.

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[John Oliver]

Welcome back to my guest tonight. He was the director of the CIA from 2009 to 2011, then became secretary of defense until 2013. His new book is called Worthy Fights. Please welcome the program secretary Leon Panetta. Sir, hello.

[Leon Panetta]

How are you?

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Sir, thanks.

[John Oliver]

Please have a CEO.

Nice to see you. You've written a book here. It's called Worthy Fights. We'll talk about you. We'll talk about your book. You were with the CIA, so obviously you already know everything about me.

So when you write a book like this and then you want to promote it, does the president call you and say shut up.

Or does he? What happens? What is the pushback?

[Leon Panetta]

Not much.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Not much really.

[John Oliver]

There has not been, they haven't called to complain and say you're speaking ill of our strategies and that sort of thing?

[Leon Panetta]

No, really no.

[John Oliver]

Is that why. So were you worried when you wrote it?

[Leon Panetta]

After all, I was the CIA director.

[John Oliver]

I'm afraid of you. Is the CIA. Is the CIA operated by anyone in the US Government? Is it like a separate institute? You don't have to tell me obviously on camera, but.

Is it like a separate part of the government, like a fourth column type thing?

[Leon Panetta]

It's a very self contained operation, similar to the Marines.

[John Oliver]

Really? Yeah, but the Marines have like a commander in chief, the CIA.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Really?

[John Oliver]

Do they report to anybody, really?

[Leon Panetta]

The director.

[John Oliver]

That's you?

[Leon Panetta]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

Anybody else?

Anyway, I love your book.

Let me ask you a question. What are we doing?

Because it seems like we have a relatively incoherent strategy and we've had it for quite some time now. Typically when you have strategies like that, you change it to make it coherent.

So we have this idea we're going to fight isil. It's this incredibly evil group, more evil than anything we've ever seen. We're incredibly scared of them, but we're only going to fight them from the air and only in certain places at certain times. Does that sound coherent?

Well.

[Leon Panetta]

Yes.

I guess it'll depend on what happens with Kobani. You know, look, when you're dealing with something like this and a terrorism threat like this that frankly, you know, moved as quickly as it did, I think what happens in Washington is, you know, how do we move on this, how do we deal with this, how do we confront it? And so, you know, what the President decided is, look, we are going to confront isis. We're going to put troops on the ground in Iraq to try to train the Iraqi security force to deal with.

[John Oliver]

He's not troops on the ground though. We're calling them advisors.

[Leon Panetta]

Yeah, but they wear boots.

[John Oliver]

On the ground. Crazy. So we have troops on the ground in Iraq, but apparently Syria, which is generally their safe haven, is a totally separate entity.

[Leon Panetta]

It is Syria's chaos right now and nobody quite knows, you know, who's in the opposition, how many members of the opposition there are, how many groups there are. I mean, that's how ISIS pretty much developed. And so that strategy is, you know, we have decided, President's decided that we're going to go in and train and try to arm those elements that hopefully will represent moderate opposition force that can then help us in defining the targets there. And going after ISIS in Syria, it's going to be a much tougher challenge, no question about it.

[John Oliver]

So what are we to make of the difference between the rhetoric that we hear and the reality? Because the Rhetoric is we are in the fight of our lives. This is an existential threat that we must confront. But we're not going to, you know, involve the whole country. It seems like they're trying to get the go ahead to do what they want to do without making the commitment and getting the entire country involved in whatever this battle is.

[Leon Panetta]

Yeah, no, John, I think when we confront this kind of threat, and because it's going to be long and sustained, this is not going to, you know, we're not going to be able to win this overnight. This is going to take years to be able to do this. I think the President has to prepare the country for a long and sustained battle against isis. And I think the best way to do it, frankly, would be to have Congress, Republicans and Democrats come together to give him the authorization.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Who did?

[John Oliver]

Now, what was that name again?

Congus.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Congus.

[Leon Panetta]

Those guys that are up on the Hill that can't decide what to do.

[John Oliver]

So here's what you hear from these guys. We're in this existential fight for our lives. They won't come back from recess to debate this on the floor.

How in God's name can that be?

[Leon Panetta]

Okay, well, you know, everybody's going through this dance as to whether or not they should do it. You know, we would like to do it. We think it's the right thing to do. We would welcome it happening. I think, frankly, the President should say to the Congress, come back. Let's make a decision here with regards to the authorization to take this on.

[John Oliver]

But war power system, they're not babies. They can call themselves back. They don't have to be invited to the Capitol building to do this.

[Leon Panetta]

Well, unfortunately, this Congress has a hard time trying to find the bathrooms in the Capitol.

[John Oliver]

And here's so.

And it brings up to this other idea. You know, it's been floated that if only we had kept 5,000 troops in Iraq and trained some Syrian rebels, none of this would be happening. And to my mind, that seems unbelievably unrealistic. We were in Iraq for 10 years. We spent a trillion dollars. We lost many lives. We trained this whole army. The idea that this one small solution would have completely avoided this crisis seems incredibly reductive. Yet you have senators out there championing it as though it's dogma.

[Leon Panetta]

Well, you know, no one really knows what the ultimate result of that would be. I mean, I happen to believe that we probably should have maintained a presence there because, frankly, we didn't know whether the Iraqi security force and the intelligence forces would in fact, continue to move in the right direction to help protect their country. And I think it would have been better to have been there and to put some pressure on.

[John Oliver]

But they wouldn't, apparently. They wouldn't give our troops immunity. No. Or they wouldn't give them immunity.

[Leon Panetta]

Prime Minister Maliki said, we need a SOFA agreement, which is the status of forces agreement to protect our troops. And Maliki continued to resist it. Said, you know, yeah, we should have you do this, but, you know, I'm not sure about the SOFA agreement. I'm going to have to send it to the parliament. And it was obvious that he continued to oppose it. At the same time, you know, I think probably we could have, with the leverage we had on him with military assistance, we probably could have pushed him a little more in the direction of providing that.

[John Oliver]

But did he have the leverage in his own country, in his own parliament? Clearly his coalition with the satirists was very weak to begin with. The Sunnis didn't care for him in any stretch of the imagination.

[Leon Panetta]

He was playing the Shia game, which is basically, you know, I'm going to confront the Sunnis. I would rather do it without the United States present.

[John Oliver]

Right. The Shia game, one of the worst children's games ever made.

I don't know what that means. Will you stick around? I know you have a, you have a book party to go to, but we have a few more minutes, so we'll stick around and we'll talk about all this stuff. Worthy Fights. It's on the bookshelves now. Leon Panetta. We'll be right back.

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[John Oliver]

You owe thousands in unpaid tolls. You want a free gift.

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[John Oliver]

So we're back here. We're talking about this idea. You know, when I. We talked about the incoherence of the strategy, it seems to me that our original strategy for fighting these terrorist groups is to knock over.

Existing regimes that we don't trust or like, hold them together through tens of thousands of US Troops and billions of dollars until they become fully functioning democracies that like us.

You laugh.

[Leon Panetta]

Excuse me.

[John Oliver]

You laugh. But I imagine that's kind of how it was pitched in the meeting.

Why didn't anyone else there go, that's hilarious.

Why is that not what we kind of are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq or what we were doing or what.

[Leon Panetta]

We were trying to do? I think what we, you know, what brought us there. And, you know, there are obviously a lot of questions about whether we should have gone into Iraq, whether we should have gone into Afghanistan. Once we were there, the issue became, can we accomplish a mission of giving this country the ability to govern and secure themselves? That became the mission. And so, you know, we work with their security forces, we work with their intelligence forces, we establish some of the structures of government to give them a chance to operate. But you're right. I mean, these are tribal societies. It's not as if they can overnight become Jeffersonian democracies. That just doesn't work that way.

[John Oliver]

Or why maybe some of them don't even necessarily want that or want what we're bringing them. But the thing going back to Iraq, you know, when the guys are out there and they're saying, if we just left 5,000 troops there, you know, you have a Sunni minority there that doesn't believe they're a minority, that truly believes that they should be more represented in whatever parliament system exists because they're the majority of the country when they're not. How are we supposed to in any way battle, you know, a rift that is hundreds and hundreds of years old with 5,000 or 10,000 troops or any other unrealistic solution to that?

[Leon Panetta]

Well, one of the ideas was that, you know, maybe we should divide up Iraq into a Sunni area, a Shia area, and a Kurdish area, right? And I remember when I went there, both as CIA director and Secretary of defense, I said, you know, what. What about that idea? And the Sunnis didn't like it. The Shias didn't like it. The Kurds didn't like it. They said, we have a country, we want to keep it a country, and we want to be able to try to work our way through this. And that's the problem. The problem is, I think the structure is there, I think the desire is there to keep a country together. But very frankly, in order for that to happen, like every country, you need the leadership that will, in fact, take the risks necessary in order to govern. And frankly, if you look at Washington, we have a problem in terms of taking the risks necessary to get things done for this country.

[John Oliver]

Now that's, I think that's very interesting. You know, why have we lost that? Not to use a phrase that I picked up somewhere, I can't remember where it came from. Audacity of hope.

What has happened to this idea? Because I can tell you, I think people generally feel that the United States either has an unrealistic expectation of how it projects its power or an inability to project it in a way that doesn't play to the individual bases here. At some point, you cannot rely on these military families to continue to sacrifice in the manner that they have.

[Leon Panetta]

You're right.

[John Oliver]

If you're saying to me this is a 30 year war, well, only 1% of the country's invested in that and that's military families. And we've put already way too much pressure on them. We have a VA system that can't handle the casualties that have already come back from there. So how can any of us believe this is a realistic battle or that our government is willing to do it? Why is there not talk of a draft? Why is there not talk of a mobilization of resources?

[Leon Panetta]

John, you know what the biggest security threat right now to the country is, is the dysfunction in Washington. Because the fact is the parties are not willing to work together in order to solve the problems facing this country. And so they've kind of given up. They've given up on dealing with budgets, they've given up on immigration reform, they've given up on trade legislation, they've given up on infrastructure funding. They've given up on providing the kind of stable.

Appropriations bills that would help fund whatever we're doing, whether it's in defense or anything else. And I think what it means is that we're a country that is operating by crisis. I often tell the students that I deal with at our institute, we govern in a democracy either by leadership or crisis. If leadership is there and willing to take the risk, we can deal with these issues. If not, we govern by crisis. And very frankly, today we largely govern.

[John Oliver]

By crisis, even in crisis. And people wanted to applaud the fact that there are crisis. I don't know where that applause was coming from we govern by crisis, Chaos.

Anarchy.

Governing by crisis, though, seems like it would present opportunity that, you know, when they say there's always an opportunity in crisis, that through crisis, either there would be an enormous executive overreach, which some people say has happened, but does not appear to be the case. The financial crisis, you would have thought, okay, that's a crisis. Within that crisis, we have an opportunity to reform it by fiat to some extent. We didn't do that in this instance. The same thing. We're governing. I would say that we're not governing in crisis. Maybe that's the case. We're just reacting to crisis and papering it over, hopefully until the new tenants move in and then they go, there's no four here.

That's what it appears to be.

[Donald Rumsfeld]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

And I have to say, it feels like the Democrats are willing to govern, however incompetently, but the Republicans truly decided from day one we're not working with this guy. Is that the case?

[Leon Panetta]

I think with the Tea Party members there, they made a decision that as far as they're concerned, you know, they'll blow up the government, they'll shut the government down. And so there's a group there that obviously is very difficult to deal with. There are some Republicans there, both in the House and the Senate, that I think legitimately want to be able to cut some deals and get it done. I mean, you know, look, most of my history in Washington from a legislative system. When I was in Congress, you know, I saw. I've seen Washington at its best and Washington at its worst. I've seen Washington work. I've seen Republicans and Democrats come together and solve these issues.

[John Oliver]

But it takes the willingness to take. How old are you?

When was it? Because I'm understanding the best. What was the best? I think that can give people some sense that it existed, but it feels like it didn't. In your mind, when did it work to address a problem and then execute that solution in a reasonably competent, non overly bureaucratic manner?

[Leon Panetta]

I mean, after I got out of the Army, I went back to Washington as legislative assistant to a senator from California. I mean, at the time, most of your audience won't remember the names. I mean, on the Republican side, there were people like Jacob Javits, Clifford Case from New Jersey, George Akin from Vermont, Hugh Scott from Pennsylvania, my boss, Tom Kuechel, who was a Republican from California, Mark Hatfield. And they were willing to work with Democrats like Henry Jackson Symington, Hubert Humphrey, Dick Russell, Sam Ervin, others. And yes, they had their politics. Yes, they you know, they played politics, they fought each other in elections, but when it came to those big issues, and Lyndon Johnson was the president at the time, when it came to big issues, they said, we really do have to work together. And they created landmark legislation in civil rights, in energy, in the environment, in education, in health care. All of that was produced because they were willing to work together on behalf of the country. And when I was elected to Congress, Tip o' Neill was the speaker of the House. A guy named Bob Michael was the minority leader in Illinois. They fought each other politically, but when it came to issues that they thought were important for the country, they were willing to work together. We need to get back to that. This country needs to work together to solve those problems.

[John Oliver]

I don't disagree with that in any way, shape or form. How do we. Because honestly, I will take misguided good intentions over what we're getting now almost. Almost any day. But what is the fulcrum of that change? Is it shame? Is it.

Electoral politics does not seem to be the answer anymore? So where do the American people have a certain amount of leverage? Or does it have to get. Is this a situation like that occurs with those that abuse drugs, they have to hit rock bottom, and then we have to sit them down and go, we all love you, but.

If this doesn't change, we're cutting you off, or whatever it is that you would say. What is the method that, you know.

[Leon Panetta]

You have to be an optimist when you're in this business, otherwise you wind up jumping in the Potomac. My view. My view, frankly, is. And look, as Secretary of Defense, I saw the men and women in uniform that go out there, put their lives on the line, fight and die for this country, Fight to protect it, die to protect it. And I look at that courage, and I look at that willingness to make that sacrifice, and I ask myself, why can't the leadership in this country maybe take a little bit of that risk in order to govern?

[John Oliver]

A little bit of that honor, a little bit of that integrity? Because it does feel like on the home side, we have not lived up in any way to the sacrifice that we've asked.

[Leon Panetta]

That's right.

[John Oliver]

Well, I hope that that changes at some point. You wouldn't happen to have a year having worked at the CIA? You wouldn't know when that might happen, would you?

You guys really listen to our phone calls.

[Leon Panetta]

You gotta watch what you're saying.

[John Oliver]

Or you can find Johnny Books. On my own tonight. Explore more shows from the Daily show podcast universe by searching the Daily show. Wherever you get your podcasts, watch the Daily show weeknights at 1110 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount.

This has been a Comedy Central podcast.

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