Pelosi and Gates Spar on Troop Withdrawal

On Sunday, Christiane Amanpour interviewed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in the debut episode of her ABC show This Week, discussing the nine-year Afghanistan war—with surprising conclusions. While Pelosi and Gates agreed that the war was in the interest of the United States, they differed on their hopes for the July 2011 troop withdrawal. “July 2011 is not the end. It is the beginning of a transition,” Gates said. “Drawdowns early on will be of fairly limited numbers.” Pelosi, meanwhile, expressed hope for a more substantial transition. “I know it’s not going to be turn out the lights and let’s all go home on one day,” she said. “But I do think the American people expect it to be somewhere between that and a few thousand troops.”