interest do we have in afghanistan at this point with al qaeda gone, we went to afghanistan with the express purpose of getting rid of al qaeda in afghanistan as well as getting osama bin laden and we did. to those people who say, yeah, al qaeda is gone now, but once the united states leaves, it's going to come back and the situation is only going to get worse, are those people not being -- are they not realistic? >> look, i think it's a natural thing to fear al qaeda will return. i think al qaeda will return to some degree. we have enormous capabilities, again, as the president has said, to identify those threats and to respond to those threats. it doesn't take a permanent military presence on the ground to go after those who are responsible for a threat against the united states. we have manifold over the horizon technologies, strong intelligence resources. and i think it's important to remember that we went into