right now it s unity of rhetoric. everyone means the same thing but they say we agree on the mission and don t want to use words conditions-based and make it sound like there is disagreement. they re all talking about it in a strange way, but that is what i take away from yesterday and today. bret: charles, this is a general who ran if surge, the troop surge in iraq successfully. we know iraq is a different animal than afghanistan. completely different. but here the president is empowering petraeus to make the calls now. what about that? look, there was this remarkable success in iraq tend fact that we have petraeus in place is our best hope of repeating it. but the biggest self-inflicted impediment and the biggest difference between iraq and afghanistan is in iraq, we have president famous and attacked before his stubbornness. he never spoke about exit strategy or date of withdrawal. he was in the surge unconditionally and he wanted
talking to the senate on the right. are they talking about cowboy movements with a fork tongue here? we need an initiative. which we don t have. when you go to war there s a mid beginning, middle, transition period and an end. there s mixed signals for the white house. the republicans just yesterday told the american people that we can t afford to extend unemployment benefits for those out of work right now. many of our fellow citizens because we don t have the money. yet when it comes to supporting president karzai, a corrupt leader, we re a bottomless pit. we need some clarity here. that clarity needs to include an exit strategy, which we don t have right now. let me ask you congressman nadler, what s the difference between the bush strategy in afghanistan and the obama
date is actually flexible. that it will be the beginning of a drawdown and not the end or beginning of a drawdown. so john mccain gets what he wants. john mccain gets what he wants and a number of senators and a number of military leaders get what they want, which is they want some recognition that you cannot let anything but the conditions on the ground dictate an exit strategy. another political reality that you know well which you can see the president s approval ratings going down and you can feel that a lot of war critics sense this opening now to reopen this debate, even when general petraeus goes before the senate armed services committee about, listen, this is what you said going in. this is why you were elected. get us out of there. in march, april, may, even part of june in 2007, just after president bush announced the surge in iraq, those were some of the bloodiest, seeming to go no where months in iraq and then
2011 be seen for what it is. the date when a process begins based on conditions, not the date when the u.s. heads for the exits. who sets the conditions? general petraeus is a hawk. congressman mcgovern and congress nadler, or the president? who decides when conditions have been met? well, the president of the united states is our commander in chief. he makes the decisions in consultations with general petraeus. there is no exit strategy. petraeus comments amplify that fact. we don t know how this will end. we ve been there ten years. we were originally going after al qaeda. al qaeda has now moved to other places. what we need to do is find a way to extricate ourselves from afghanistan, get the afghan government to stand up and do its job, and we need to then go after the enemy. those who are responsible for killing so many of our people on september 11th. al qaeda is our enemy. we need to redirect the efforts to getting to them.
wherever al qaeda is it makes sense to disrupt the operations. we are told there are fewer than 100 al qaeda in the entire country. let s go to what general petraeus said. he seems to be the authority figure, gentlemen on the whole issue. here he is on june 16th a few days ago. he testified on the hill. here s what he had to say about the timetable. let s listen. it is important that july 2011 be seen for what it is. the date when a process begins based on conditions, not the date when the u.s. heads for the exits. who sets the conditions? general petraeus is a hawk. congressman mcgovern and congress nadler, or the president? who decides when conditions have been met? well, the president of the united states is our commander in chief. he makes the decisions in consultations with general petraeus. there is no exit strategy. petraeus comments amplify that fact. we don t know how this will end. we ve been there ten years. we were originally going after al qaeda. al qaeda has now