in three hours now, he's likely to say we've made progress a all three fronts and it's time to pull back. it will probably be too much for the right, too little for the left, but no question americans are growing increasingly impatient with its war and its costs. >> that's our top story tonight. in between, hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded in iraq and afghanistan. my question tonight, did all that death and horror play any role in catching and killing bin laden. plus al gore comes out to criticize the president. in a 7,000-word piece in "rolling stone" he says president obama hasn't made the case for action on global warming. steven colbert solves the problem of his voergs of the generic republican candidate. it's in the side show. we will have presidential coverage beginning at 8 eastern wp we start with the strategy for afghanistan. the president's expected to announce will it remove 5,000 troops this summer, another 5,000 by the end of the year and 20,000 bit end of next year. the latest poll fines 56,000 americans said we should remove troops as soon as possible. that's an all-time high. senator boxer, democrat from california, member of the foreign relations committee joins us now. senator boxer, what do you make of this? if 10,000 in th year, 20,000 next year, still 70,000 in country. your thought? >> well, i think that number one, we're not positive of what he is going to say. it is three years but i'm going to say that you may have the right information there. if you do, this is my response, the good news for me tonight is that we're going to see you know, this longest american war start to come to an end. the news that may not be exactly what i want to hear is that it's going at a slower pace than i think is necessary. chris, when the president announced at the second surge, the first surge was 17,000 troops i supported him. he said this afghan war was neglected, we have to catch osama bin laden, and i thought he was right. now that has been done. the second surge, 30,000 troops. that mission, must come to an end. and that mission right now is counter insurgency. which means we have boots on the ground going door to door almost side by side with the afghans. it is time for the afghans to step up to the plate. the president said the 30,000 surge was temporary. if it was temporary, he announced it in december of '09. those 30,000 troops should be brought home by the end of this year. and the mission should change. to one of counterterrorism and traying the afghan soldiers because we have already trained almost 300,000 but they need more training. look there's 50 al qaeda left. that's according to leon pi netta. we don't need all of our traps there now. we need just the small force, about 25,000 as i said see it, and we can get down there, according to the experts, to that level of force, under 18 months, 12 to 18 months. >> if we can survive over there, effectively with just a training mission of say 25,000 troops, why do we keep 70,000 there for the duration? what do we get done that we couldn't get done by leaving tomorrow morning? what is getting accomplished over there by a combat mission? >> well, have you hit the nail on the head here. it is a question of what the mission is. you don't just say, i'm going to bring home so many people without putting it to a mission. that's the question. right now it is a counter insurgency mission. i think it is time to change it so it is counter terrorism and training the troops. so the experts tell me you can do that with 25 those and within 12 to 18 months. but i have to say as i reread what our great president said, and listen, we have to give credit where credit is due. i may not agree with everything he says because i think that 30,000 ought to come home bit end of the year. it was the surge. it was the temporary. change the mission, do it. but we have to give credit. this is the commander-in-chief that did finally get osama bin laden. and this is the commander-in-chief who is ending the iraq war. we will have all of our troops gone out of iraq by the end of this year. so my heart is with the president. i know that he's been, you know, really working this through. he has voices on one and another. i hope he listened to all of the voices. i think at the end of the day he said the 30,000 would be temporary. and i took him at his word and i hope we see a quicker that will kal ender than i think we will see. >> senator boxer, i believe you became an activist the way a lot of us did, maybe because of the war in vietnam. isn't it odd to have a republican like huntsman to the left on this. huntsman saying it is about keeping our competitive edge with china et cetera. how does it make you feel having a republican, to use to your phrase kwb wolf blitzer to your left. >> i think i think it great that republicans have decided they don't love every single war thp is th is good. if it is real, i think it should be embraced but the fact is this president knew when he came into office that afghanistan was neglected. look i voted to go after bin laden. and george bush turned totally around and went into iraq and ne glebtd afghanistan the the president came in and i think he has is r done what he said he would do. he is training the afghan troops. the thing is when i hear karzai say some of the things he says which is you are occupiers, you are this, you're that be think it is time to change that mission and get our troops out of there at a quicker, at a quicker pace. >> thank you so much. senator boxer from california. the afghan study group an former marine corps captain, a hell after record behind him np in 2009 resigning from the diplomatic place he had in afghanistan. let's get to your view. i asked this question to the senator. what are we getting done that in the next three years and we lost a thousand lives of americans since the president took office, this president. what will be accomplished if we string this out through 2014? >> not much. false security. al qaeda is not there. you look at where al qaeda attacked us from. look at the last attacks, where are they from in from connecticut, from nigeria. a guy from denver. a guy in fort hood. >> so what are we fighting there? >> we are involved in -- that's a civil war. when we went there in 2001, it was the right thing to do, chris. but what we got involved in is someone else's civil war. we intervened and took one side. it is a multisided conflict. there is ethnic things, regional things. a lot of conflict. our kids are caught between hat field and mccoy type feuds. that's what we found ourselves in. ten years later after taking one side in the conflict, that's why over this last couple of years as we have seen 60,000 troops increase on the part of the u.s. over the last couple of years, we have seen the blossom. there are more every year because that money is 0e7bly going to help certain people in the population. so our role there with troops or with money has been -- >> we bombed out, got out of there, we beat the soviets. charlie wilson's war. we left, the taliban took over. if we leave, how long would it take for the taliban it take over. >> i don't think they would. why would the back stannys back the taliban the way they did in the 09s? why would -- even if the it'll ban take over, why would they like al qaeda back? we bombed them once, took them out of power once. they learned their lesson. why would al qaeda want to go back? they are in pakistan, dubai, new york, london. that is like asking a modern company about the internet. >> men and women are there in harm's way. when they wake up in the morning who are they fighting. >> who are we fighting? >> yes. are we fighting taliban? who is on the other side of us. >> broad multidimensional insurgency. some is religious but it goes back decades. they have been fighting afghanistan since the '70s. >> so we are fighting those who oppose the central government. >> yes. >> we are karzai's garrison force? >> we are propping karzai up and making him and his cronies rich. >> okay. we leave in three, four years. is it any different if we leave now posed to then? generally we won't say more than three or four more years. at the end of three or four more years. 2014, how is it different than if we left tomorrow morning? >> it wouldn't be. that's why we made a mistake in 2009. the phrase i use recently in 2009 waist deep in quicksand, now we are chest deep under quicksand. we have been there so long, a hundred thousand contractors, tens of billions of dollars. we are propping the place up. if we pull out and leave tomorrow. >> give the president what he is due. he will bring back 10,000 troops this calendar year. then another 23,000 next time. this is leak we got, i guess. then in 2012, rather 13 and 14, we get the rest of the combat troops out. reducing 25,000 down from a hundred thousand. what does all that add up to? what do you think of that plan? >> i don't think much of it chris. if we don't change the strategy or be a belligerent or t.o. a mediator, then we are just the same conflict, this time next year with 10,000 less troops or 20,000 less troops. 2014, getting troops out is -- >> our combat troops, we still keep 25,000 trainers over there. which is amazing to me. >> so getting to that point is predicated on our militarily defeating the insurgency. we haven't seen it. for all this talk -- >> here is a dangerous point. could the president go into the most dangerous area, where is somewhere in the middle where nothing gets done. >> yes. >> the job will keep getting bigger with fewer troops. that sounds like a recipe for disaster. instead after hundred thousand troops fighting the same war they are down to 25,000 fighting the same kind of war. >> what you get is i think the president is similar under 2009, trying to please everybody. getting a difference again which you know -- >> we will find out as the program goes on. i want to find out why the president believes this were. you don't. senator boxer believes we got to come home. the president doesn't quite agree. he believes we have to stretch this thing out pop thank you matthew hoh. appreciate your service. coming up, al gore is back. blasting president baks over climate change. you think romnee or bachmann will do a better job? you're watching "hardball" on msnbc. ugh, my feet are killin' me. well, we're here to get you custom orthotic inserts. dr. scholl's custom fit orthotic center recommends the custom-fit orthotic that's best for your tired feet. foot-care scientists are behind it. you'll get all-day relief. for your tired achy feet. for locations, see drscholls.com. thank you... foreign policy dominates the news today. president obama has new worries on the domestic front. a new bloomberg poll shows americans are increasingly frustrated with his handling of the economy and the number of voters say they will definitely vote for him in 2012 is dropping. according to the poll only three in ten say they are certain to vote for reelection of the president in 2012 versus 36% say say they definitely won't vote for him. the news isn't all bad. the polls say six out of ten say it is hard to vote for the republicans in the race because they have to move too far right on the social and fiscal issues just to win the nomination. in 2000, when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as president, i knew the road ahead would be difficult. we have accomplished so much, yet challenges lie ahead. we've been able to stop global warming. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was "saturday night live" of course that sketch has a bitter grain of truth for al gore if he had won, chances are he would be further along about global warming. he left politics, took a low profile. now he's written that president obama has been a disappointment. he writes obama's election was accompanied by intense hope that many things in need of change would change. climate change, unfortunately is in the second category. gore adding president obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case. eric bates is executive editor of "rolling stone." thank you, joan and eric, for joining us. eric, did he come to you or did you talk to him? >> we talked to him about this. we felt that everybody knows the science. gore has made clear what the science says, that climate change is real, the planet face as grave risk. the question is why hasn't moran done to stop it? we thought he was in a position to give us an analysis of that. >> what do you think is the problem? the republican party are bakley aligning themselves in antichef science. they're willing to say they believe the world is about 5,000 years old, they go back to fundamentalist views, and they really don't have any problem being anti-science. isn't that really the problem? not that gore has a problem with obama. >> it's interesting, the essay is about the press in the media. and how they have fallen down. gore points out the media hasn't done is job and taken a he said/she said approach, when in fact there's truth and falsity in that. >> i'm with you on there. i hate that so-called evenhanded objective journalism. you can't say something isn't true if it's true in the interest of evenhandedness. al gore has been in and out of public life, after getting screwed out of the election. we can argue how it was done, but it ended up being bad calls up and down bad intervention by the supreme court. we can all agree on that, a lot of us. >> yes. >> he's a qualified guy, i think he ran a terrible campaign, but he did "inconvenient truth" a hell of a documentary, and now he's back. what do you make of his going after the president in this fashion? >> well, you know, eric made a good point. i did real the whole 7,000 words. it's inspiring, a bit depressing, but most is spent on us -- not the three of us, but on the media, and on this fog that has been caused by spending, by powerful interests who are against any action on climit change. that's really what it's about. then he comes to obama. when he gets to obama, giving him credit for some things he's done, and it's kind of bigger than that. what he's saying is what other liberal advocates say. he hasn't told a story of, a, what we're up against, but also, b, what we can do about it. this speaks to something you are interested in. he talks about we could have a great industrial renaissance. we should be solving the unemployment crisis while solving the global crisis, and making national security less of an issue because we're not dependent on oil. he sees how they're interconnected. so does president obama, but president obama has gotten stuck in the gridlock of washington. >> eric, i want to go back. the house democrats who stuck their necks out on cap and trade have had their heads cut off the the senate didn't vote. the senate never got to it. you can argue it's the president's fault, but they're giving up whole states in the interest of climate change. west virginia used to be a democratic state. it voted for clinton. it's gone. you can't talk cap and trade in west virginia. there's a lot of places in coal country you dare not spend a nickel for climate change issues. isn't that the problem? >> we've gone from a place where we knew the crisis we were phasing. now you can't even talk reasonably about the solutions. i think that's gore's main point, the attack on climate science is on the attack on the rule of reason, an attack on our ability as a society to hold a rational debate on what the facts say and what we need to do. >> back to joan, and eric jump in, too, have we ever had a time where one side is willing to say something -- you can argue about wars and measuring facts, but here's a fact. rush limbaugh says stuff that is -- just not true. i never use the word lie, but it's appropriate here. >> it is, it is. >> glenn beck, i hear him years ago on the radio before he was on tv saying there's no climate change pandering to business times. they're evil in what they're doing. i'm not saying their souls are evil, but what they're doing is really, really wrong. it's not the president. it's this corrupt media on the right. corrupt media. they're making good salaries telling people what they know is not true. rush limbaugh is not a stupid person. glenn beck is not stupid. your thoughts. >> they're serving the interests on people making a lot of money from our system being exactly the way it is, and they don't care. i think you're right. i mean, the president has had himself blocked, but there's a need for more leadership on this issue, and i think there's a feeling that he could do more than he did. i don't know what he could have done in the senate. i read the piece, i know there was a juncture back then when senators seemed interested and lindsey graham walked away, i think it was very complicated. i think sometimes the people ask the president to be superman in these situations. that's his job, sort of, but we have to be realistic about congress. >> joan, as always i agree with you 99% of the time. eric, good editing there. you've got a good piece there. i would say about the president, he's always my president, on some of the big ones like climate change, race, things like that, wars. my belief is this, churchhill said this once, i refuse to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire. the president is the fire brig dade. damn it, he's not the fire. glenn beck is, rush limbaugh is the fire, the chamber of commerce, the "wall street journal" editorial page, they are the fire. let's not forget it. what's george w. bush doing with a crowd of people wearing sunglasses at night? that's just about right, isn't it? you're watching "hardball" only on msnbc. back to "hardball." time for the sideshow. steve colbert has solved the republican party's problem for 2012. this is great stuff. here he is. >> obama leads all specific republican candidates in the polls, even beating the romney. thankfully the republicans do have a darkhorse. >> the generic republican, if you find that person, beats president obama. >> guess what? i found that person. on my way to work this morning. republican party, say hello to your generic presidential nominee. look at this guy i mean, he's got everything you want. he's got a strong stride. he's well known. plus he's a family man. and as you can see from the briefcase, he's got business experience. but he's also worked blue collar jobs. this guy has something for everybody. he's well read. he's outdoorsy. he loves flags. or rectangles. the only knock on this guy other than thinks head not being attached to his body is republicans do not need another candidates who spends a suspicious amount of time hanging around men's rooms. >> perfect generic candidate. he's any republican candidate, no republican person exactly. next up, the wheels on the bus go round and round, but maybe not. 2012 speculation again when sarah palin's bus started to rumble up the east coast, but then most of the headlines focused on her eating pizza with 2k07b8d trump. so did her road show run off-course? it's reported that her aides drafted itineraries taking her through the west and southeast this month, but the travel blueprints are now in limbo. she knows how to dart out there. that's good for publicity, not so good for actually doing anything. did you notice? and finally another history-making moment. the former president was part of the crowd at tuesday night's texas rangers game to set the new guinness records for the most people wearing sun glasses in the dark. perfect. a war without purpose? >> a half hour away from the president's speech. this is "hardball." all day. doesn't the esurance website do most of, your work? 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