dangerous platform. they can t be exactly alike. for the most part, they have the same principles. but when it comes to specifics of the entitlements, i think that s where they ll differ. joe biden doesn t believe there is 57 states and barak obama doesn t believe in i was told before we started we were going to be doing analysis and not take shots. i ll get into it real fast. you can take moment there and think of all the great things you want to say. let s bring in amelia. well dom the five. thank you. so there is a number of differences. are they so great that they re polarizing between the two men, or is there a general consensus between them regarding entitlements, regarding spending and cutting taxes? no, more than anything else, what ryan has what romney doesn t, you can start from a white piece of paper and put together a plan so off platform to have major discussions from. that s hard to do for a lot of
knew the world. did he not listen to them? did he listen to them? to a certain extent and he weighed it, but he was focused on the threat and he was he also was focused in the iraq war, which president bush launched, he told me in one of these interviews, said, i believe we have a duty to free people and i think that was really the driver. thought he was going to liberate iraq. bill: so he looked at it as a noble cause to go to a foreign country and liberate these people from saddam hussein. but again, that was after the weapons of mass destruction didn t show up. obama doesn t see a world like that. he doesn t think we have an obligation to liberate anybody, does he? i think that s quite correct and i think he is focused on domestic policy and he keeps saying in these meetings, as goes on and on, for instance, after he s decided to send 30,000 troops to afghanistan, he says, nothing would make rahm
unlimited counter insurgency strategy, which is what general petraeus wanted. bill: just win the war. now, you correct me if i am wrong. my gut instinct, and i have this not on anything other than gut is that barak obama doesn t listen to hillary clinton. she is not a major shaper in what he does or doesn t do. that is absolutely correct. and political people in the white house were quite annoyed that she aligned herself with the military in such a dramatic way. i wanted to get to something you really need to make a distinction on the fight against al-qaeda, which as we know is in pakistan, not afghanistan, obama has been very aggressive and i think we re going to see in coming weeks more aguesssive acts, not just drone attacks, helicopter attacks. i quote leon panetta, the country director saying, we need
terms of winning a war or losing a war on my watch. i want the country to be in a better position. now, as you know, if you ask that question to george bush, he d jump in his chair and say, i want to win. we have to win. the question here, and i say it s unanswered at this point does the president, because intellectually knows afghanistan is a hard case, as he repeatedly says, i ve been dealt a bad hand. he hasn t been dealt history dealt the country a bad hand. it s not about obama. it s about america. let me stop you there for a minute. i m going to i want to hold you over. i want to compare president obama to president bush on how they waged war, what their mentality was. bob woodward, will be back in a moment. we ll have polling on the latest obama afghanistan situation. john stossel coming up. he says some people are so stupid, they shouldn t be allowed to vote. he ll be here to explain in just
bill: continuing with our lead story is president obama an effective terror warrior. a poll asked, do you approve or disapprove? 48 approve. 41% do not. according to the poll, do you approve of the way he s handling foreign policy in general, 45% say they approve. 44% dead heat do not. joining us, bob woodward, author of a book. you wrote four books on bush going to war. so i mean, i assume you know bush going to war. so contrast the two men. we just talked about barak obama. let s talk about bush. the rap on bush was that he was a gut player. he made decision on his gut. but i don t know what that means. he had a whole bunch of guys around him like cheney, donald rumsfeld, his father, colin powell. these kinds of people who really