i skimmed it and i have seen some of the quotes. they are accurate. and essentially the white house is happy because they are able to telegraph that president obama although he sent the 30,000 troops the surge, they can show before the midterm elections that, in fact, he was opposed all along to sending the troops. here is what he told the defense secretary gates and secretary of state hillary clinton on october 26, 2009. i m not doing ten years, i m not doing long term nation building or spending $1 trillion, i have two years with the public on this and i want an exit strategy. i can t lose the whole democratic party. clearly there were politics involved in the decision. shepard: quotes from the generals and national security team are as controversial as some of those that got general mcchrystal fired. but those were behind the scenes trying to decide what a nation will do. the others were to a reporter.
woodward and i know he has conversations with people like william casy years ago when he was in a coma and a lot of people don t believe him. a lot of quotes and sources might think that it s not true, he sits down with all his generals and he said there s no way we re going to have success this way. he said i need an exit strategy. the only exit strategy you have is to essentially win the war. he draws up this 48-year-old professor lawyer, two year senator, draws up his own battle plan. six pages and hands it out to the generals at which time he says do you have any objections? at which time the generals go yeah. so they start bringing up objections and he gets exacerbated and says why do we have meetings? we have the meetings because of the war that we don t win. some of them want 40,000 troops and joe biden and others say they d like seven guys, you know, they d like to keep it as
to the negotiating table. that was one of the top issues on parker spitzer. this whole idea of bringing the taliban into the government, is this a way for us to get out? is thit the best exit strategy for us? i don t think we should think of it that way. there are very good studies of civil wars. most civil wars end through negotiations. it s very rare to have the north triumphing over the south as it did in the american civil war. most of the time you have a messy political outcome with a negotiation. particularly with the taliban, this is a little different than people s imagination. 33 are not arabs that enters the country. they represent the conservative part of the community. these guys are he to stay. parker spitzer on cnn. tune in for smart political talk every night right here at 58 p.m. on cnn. police accused of protecting
disagreement. bob woodward chronicles it all in this book. he s done it again, a great deal of controversy there. the president, very concerned that he felt as though frustration boiling over, according to the book, that the military was boxing him in. general mcchrystal, he asked for 40,000 more troops in afghanistan. the president undertook that review, wanted a painstaking look at exactly how those troops were going to be used. they ended up with 30,000. he had an exit strategy. that s something that officials at the pentagon were very much against, according to the book, as well. but then the president telling lindsey graham, of all people, the republican from south carolina, according to the book, i can t lose the whole democratic party. in the context of needing that exit strategy. so there is no shortage, you talked about the holbrooke and biden going at each other. mike mullin against his deputy, petraeus. and right on down the line. even an intel report revealed in
president who is trying to understand what leeway he has. i think it is defensible. i have talked to michael beschloss and others who say that this is someone trying to figure out what is tolerable by the american people. i think they can explain this and say this is exactly what he is doing. well, he s saying how much he can get away with in terms of keeping his troops there, because his base will depart from him otherwise. let ask you about the positive question. are we in there for two years because he believes in what we can do for two years or believe that is what he has to do to keep the right from attacking him, because throughout this these quotes we are getting from this book today, we are getting the sense that he really wants to get out. he wants an exit strategy from afghanistan. my question is why are we even there two years if he wants to get out now? i think they felt trapped. from reading this book, they felt trapped with the war in afghanistan that they had no op