lines in afghanistan is looking better. gates marking progress in the war against the taliban. cnn's chris lawrence is at the pentagon. chris, tell us about his assessment. >> reporter: kyra, he says the closer you get to the front lines the better the war actually looks and pretty blunt in assessing the big picture. he said, look, back in 2001, 2002, kicking out the taliban, girls started going to school in afghanistan, he said, we won that phase of the war and then said we took the eye off the ball and districted in iraq. he said afghanistan wurnd underfunded and made a strong point to say in the nine years this war is going on, he said it's only in the last year and a half that he feels they have the resources to really make a change. >> i would say since the beginning of 2009 with the president's first decision to add another 21,000 troops and then decision in january to add