at one point as you know, senator, we had a number of advisors down to a fairly low levels. as we began to lift the numbers of advisors that we had there and scale back on the people that we had interfacing with the afghans on a daily basis we began to lose that fingertip feel. and so our ability to assess with some degree of certainty continued to erode the smaller that we got. >> my sense is that's what we were hearing for years, not just at the end. that this is an endemic problem for decades. over a decade. so hopefully we will have the opportunity to do that. that's my final question. what are we actually doing to learn from the conclusion of these military operations? particularly from a strategic assessment point of view when it comes to end of conflict transitions.