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By their sacrifice and by the sacrifices of their families. >> larry: was it worth it? now a change of mission. what happens next? what does it mean for the united states and the world next on "larry king live." in a couple moments well check in with david axelrod, senior adviser to the president. hes at the white house. first lets get reaction to the address from those in iraq. cnn pentagon correspondent chris lawrence is at camp victory and cnns arwa damon who is in baghdad. chris, 50,000 troo...

Of this? >> larry, i think you asked if these are troubling times, theyre troubling times for the american people. theres so much anxiety about the economy. we had a huge hole that we have to climb out of and thats taken, as the president said from the beginning, this is going to take more time than anybody wanted and its an ongoing effort and part of his message tonight is we have to really focus on that effort and by winding down our effort in iraq thats one barrier weve crossed that frees us ...

Offense. >> larry: jon soltz, in your opinion, is that a certainty? >> really in favor of whats going on in afghanistan right now. the president has changed the mission in afghanistan from a counter al qaeda mission to a counter insurgency mission. base xli a mission now to promote democratization and president karzai. why do it all? hes now up to eight. in reality, the timetable to be effective cannot happen in ten months. he talked about borders, pakistan and afghanistan. the only people in th...

Reasons hes trumping up the idea hes getting out of iraq. >> larry: did he? >> i think my point of agreement with jon ends on the time line. jons right. how do you both surge into afghanistan and tell the enemy when youre going to leave in 2011? that is an albatross. were hearing it from commanders, insurgents and local, regular folks in afghanistan. they know were leaving and so theyre hesitant to side with us. this isnt a nation building exercise. this is capacity building. the president talke...

Who are still in iraq. troops that are in combat roles that are combat troops and when i went into iraq in 2003 and my first thing that happened to me that night we got ambushed by rbgs and i remember thinking when i finally got into the area we were at, wow, didnt george bush just said the mission was accomplished and combat operations were over? thats a very, very dangerous statement for him to make. if you look in the history of our country and the challenges we faced in beirut and somalia, y...